Fieldwork by Derek Chan
Fieldwork
Derek ChanNow that I have watched the pines
deepen from green to grey,
tell me what is more endless
than the earth moving
in the wrong direction. A woman
next door wakes to drink milk
and talk to her dead husband
about trimming the rose hips
rising wild to ravage the sun.
Can god still hear the flowers
breathing? Inside my dad’s breast
-pocket is a letter written
in the color of my favorite pills,
waiting to be sent to a land where
the light changes years before
ours. A shadow cries out sharply.
The wind outside tries to tear
out the world, as red petals drip
open the sky. How does it happen
that a self can walk into a ceaseless
place and break apart while still
waiting for clarity to come?
A river is moving into a far distance.
Stand in the field with your eyes
open. Let emptiness happen.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in wildness, Issue 34, 2024.
ABOUT DEREK CHAN
Derek Chan is from Melbourne, Australia. He is an MFA graduate of Cornell University, where he was a university fellow, an editor of EPOCH magazine, and a two-time recipient of the Corson-Browning Poetry Prize. He holds a First-Class Honors in Literary Studies and Psychology from Monash University, where he received an Arthur Brown Thesis Prize. His work has appeared in Best of Australian Poems, Oxford Poetry, The Margins, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2024 Forward
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ENDNOTES
- This is Day 13 of The Sealey Challenge 2026—a community challenge to read one book of poetry a day for the month of August, named after Nicole Sealey.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: mortality • grief • emptiness • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.



