Cotton and morning glories.

There are a multitude of fields here - peanut, tobacco, corn, soybean, and cotton. Each is distinctive.

The dusty peanut crops lie close to the ground, as if they have ears pressed to the dirt, listening for a distant train. The corn crops are frazzled and yellow-brown, their scraggly leaves stick out like unwashed collars and sleeves. They are a legion of gaunt, ill-dressed hobos.

I can't see a soybean field without remembering the summer before Kent died, our senior year, the night of graduation, drinking cheap beer and tequila under a deep blue universe. There was no where to go in our small town, so we sat on the edge of a soybean field, listening to a classic rock station on the Toyota's radio.

I can't see a tobacco field without imagining my grandmother as a young girl, caught in a rain storm, suddenly realizing her need for a bra. I can see her freckles and her red hair and her adolescence as if I'd been there myself. I can see her, hiding her sudden exposure, behind a broad, golden leaf the size of a Balinese fan.

I never noticed cotton fields before this year, though they must have always been there. The plants are knee-high and swollen with white pulp, pushing out of the green. Along the edges of the fields, interspersed with the green and white, amethyst morning glories wind their way upward. Pale yellow butterflies move over the flowers like rain.