Gold Bounty – Lanterns in the Dark

Gold Bounty is a poem by Claire Hellar Adderholt. A little about me: I’m a missionary kid who grew up in Papua New Guinea and, after living in California and Colorado, now live with my husband in Birmingham, Alabama. I’m a UCLA grad and love Tolstoy, Taylor Swift, mountain hikes, peonies, and whiskey. My work can be found at The Rabbit Room, Calla Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, and Melusine. I can also be found at @claire_de_luned on Instagram or at Lanterns in the Dark on Substack.

Gold Bounty

Shucking corn:
an oldest of human traditions.

My carpenter husband says
Let’s move to the woods and grow corn
and raise a roof over land that’s ours.

I was raised in a rainforest,
on a mountain
with fields and fields of goldenrod

the color of corn,
and shucking corn, I wonder:
is the movement through fields the same –

fields of corn and goldenrod:
does the brightness of the light
burn so transparent it glows the same the world
over –

and is there anything to distinguish old farm traditions
from the bounty the hills give, miraculous and easy –
or is it all movement, walking through slender stems that rustle,
a bounty of leaves and splendor?

all light, and green leaves,
and everything spread at our feet
for labour, and appeasement of hunger,
and a richness to satisfy
the human soul?

there is a brightness to all this transcendence.

let us go then, you and I,
to the cornfields of gold on high
and harvest, beloved, all this radiant,
given glory

Read more TCK poems here!