The Simple Life

Heavy in native headdress,
blossoms preside
over barren forsythia,
while cork-vined Chinese wisteria  
gnarl about branches
   
English Ivy accessorizes the trunk;
some things are pruned,
while others grow deep
tango wildly
between fire and root      

They solder  one ring      
after another outward      
from below;      
an ancient womb      
of knowledge and lore    
the first humans tasted      
lifetimes ago:

one in trust
the other, love      
~      
     
#WendellBerry

( after Wendell Berry )  

There is a darkness that changes a town.  
And shades of transgressions that remain,  
even after the night has relinquished.  
The pale, fading crescent of its moon  
watches the same lone farmer,  
out before the first streaks of dawn.  
He carries a bucket in each hand,  
heading to the barn on his farm  
on the outskirts of a town  
who’s residents were raised  
on a privilege of fear,  
King James verse, and the Almanac.  
He follows his quiet thoughts, and shadow  
that stretches before each step he takes  
for the early morning milking.  
Low-lying mists hover, and  
slowly curl among gravestones,  
and the rest of the town begins to  
reluctantly show signs of stirring.  
Shaking off, while the sun rises up,  
the inertia and shame, in its own waste,  
like the pigeons in his hay loft.  
 
 

For he stood so tall so square and looked across the acreage  
Countenanced all that panorama, it seemed endangered  
The heavy horse the last to graze straw bales  
He lifted up the old straw hat and scratch his pate  

His disquiet, wrinkled brow like furrows in the field  
The bees that seek the pollen, a wasp that agitates  
We must he thought, let nature evolve at its own pace  
But short term gains mean fields turned into plains  
 
The engines belched out smoke, the crows flew up and squawked  
Divorced from dirty hands the reaper smash the blackbirds nest  
The field mouse massacred upon the stalk  
 Carnage it all drowned by the roar of the exhaust  
 
He with perception heard the screams the mantle chimes  
The discord in the harmony's its balances and checks  
Iron grid upon the land weighed heavy under human hand  
For with each gain there is a pestilence profane  
 
The inheritance that DDT had left upon the soil, the earth  
For each sod holds a microcosm  
To be preserved and not downtrodden  
Not a cocktail of chemicals of false parlance  
 
The spreader with its Nitrogen to grow the crops so muscle bound  
A vowed to stand firm and make a case, take the higher ground  
 brief to challenge false ideals, not put dead flowers on a living grave  
To leave a better world, that true agronomist  
 
For I speak of Shipwreck's with such a figure head  
To know the simple life could count and not be invalid  
That conglomerates sold a greener dollar for you to chase  
Spawn a farm where crops and stock are all disgraced  
 
 

The land in the eye is clear
not clouded, like the  
numerical sum of its parts
 
Here, in the ancient waters
free of tallied reasons,
free in the mind's vastness.
 
Fearing not the infinite,
Heaven within The Earth
hides in a hill, unremarkable;
 
Faith appears above
as a bird, flying
into a sky which closes
 
Around it hiding reasons
to try for that which it needs.
Its abandon, it finds,
is hidden but everywhere,
embedded in everything.
 
    .....
 
#WendellBerry

Let me not mourn the
silence of the passing
on of the seasons

Of fruiting, of branching out;
the unnaming of leaves
and a language thereof

Speaking into the world's ear,
golden to itself in color.
It lives in the death

rooted in the incomprehensible,
singing aloud its call
to be harvested.

Let the world not name
This song, but receive
its muted melody.

Let the trifles of words
not belabor this:
Its speech that has no sound

Remains undefined in
Mans' concrete terms
in this silence where
all things dwell.

    .....

#WendellBerry

(a non-entry)

' There are no unsacred places,  
 only sacred places, and desecrated places '    
                   - Wendell Berry    
   
I    
   
In the country where arose    
the soft grasses bearing your name    
in their blooming stalks, I imagined    
myself walking into the heart of    
the yellow cover crop, bare.    
   
II    
   
Flitting by, a songbird was your spirit    
Its chirping breaking the soft lull of    
wind through your hair, dancing with    
purple specks of tiny flowers barely known of;    
their mystery that of you ascending in    
my sleep. I didn't know of you fully in my    
waking, but knew the tenderness of you in    
my softened steps through the hottest field    
in summer when the grass was high and    
bent over in homage to its maturity.    
   
III    
   
Sometimes, I hold you in memory this way:    
As an orchard, a house and a garden which    
are always present and never leave.    
I remember the colors of the flowers    
like the words which bind our sacrament    
each to the other.    
   
IV    
   
The level ground assured me I was    
sure in you and led me forward to    
comfortable shades at midday    
and sheltered places at night.    
Our bravery kept us going even    
through life's storms.    
I have trusted you as the gentle forest    
is trusted by the woodland creatures    
whom live their whole lives under it.    
   
V    
   
The planting of us was no guarantee,    
yet I, as a farmer knew it was guaranteed    
and well prepared for.  I knew the crop    
return was to be a grand reward of the    
wild land reclaiming itself after being razed.    
I knew our land would absorb all rains    
and so would we absorb the unknowns,    
the whys of how we came together    
and flourished.    
   
VI    
   
When we drank from the well,    
there was too much to not be filled;    
our love overflowed and was a    
never ending source of resurrection.    
Like the wild fields, we embraced the    
right season for our plants to bear fruit.      
I never felt worthy of you but simply was    
inclined to surrender and that letting go    
was a blessed thing that seemed to need    
no understanding to thrive, as great Sequoias    
need no reason to live as long as they are    
inclined to.  I have sunk into you as    
ancient humus into soil under a canopy    
of trees.  I am a hidden joy that you    
discover lifting your branches and    
feeding your roots.    
   
VII    
   
I gave you all this that I have,    
which is little, but enough to satisfy    
each cycle of our lives and dissolve    
its own logic into a zero sum;    
its economy is its beauty.    
It has no fair market value and one day will    
simply return unnoticed like a crop of weeds    
which delight only butterflies and bees;    
it will return to itself, folding in upon its    
very creation and becoming its own    
origin, its own soil mold becoming it's    
own food for its seeds to grow from.    
It will be known simply as a love that was,    
and is, and lives on eternally.    
   
VIII    
   
As poetry, my words as humble as anyone's    
will sing with us and our purpose to simply    
be and be satisfied.  My unbounded self    
is waiting always at your door to be greeted    
and invited in to share your hearth.    
I will wander but never leave, as a horse    
which always needs hay and water    
and gallops in circles around its barn.    
   
IX    
   
In the dark of night, I know you are there,
Death's smile is your smile and to you    
will I return at my end.  All things created    
in love return to what bore them and will    
unconditionally receive them.    
The soil does not discriminate.    
My love for you is organic and    
biodegradable and so are you    
most sacred in receiving it.    
   
    .....    
   
#WendellBerry    
   
(a non-entry in ' The Simple Life')  
   
(850 words)