I have heard you
            In rooms close with the scents
            Of old wool clothing and cut flowers
            Sunday after Sunday
            Your voice recalling the slow, incessant rhythm
            Of a bell tossed on its marker buoy
            By gray swells under a hard bank of clouds
            “I’m here.
            Hear me.
            I’m here.
            Hear me.”
            But my teachers have been work and silence
            And things I touch for better or worse
            Answering again
            The altar call of earth itself
            Soil is tilled
            Seeds are planted
            Weeds are plucked out
            Stems search for light
            As roots spread in the dark
            Another year’s food
            Watered by rain and sweat
            The simple acts of cultivation recur
            Heedless of imagined complexity
            Invented obstacles
            Let us go out and gather corn
            Golden and sweet in the afternoon
            While the sun of late September
            Real or what we call real
            Defines the inexplicable wordless sky
        

Copyright © Cy Dillon, 2002.  All Rights Reserved.