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Weathered old man, I study his type:
The Automaton.
Creaking and clicking into his seat within the chanting Mass.
But no – his soul decries his context.
Don’t waste your sympathetic smiles;
What need has he for your instruction, Voltaire?
What unfamiliar lesson could you teach him, Diderot?
Gaia is teacher and muse.
What you have detailed in sundry volumes of high and mighty word,
He inauspiciously gives living form, under her discerning eye.
At your invitation to the perfumed salon, a polite declination:
“No, thank you, I ought to get back. Horses ha’int been fed.”
He sees his smallness, taught him by a life wrestling the earth.
He knows his fallibility, taught him by solitary, dawn-lit walks home after weary nights spent by the side of a dying calf.
He understands life, its instrumental purpose, taught him by solemn slaughterings and his own broken body.
He sees his smallness; I see a crown of humility.
He knows his fallibility, and so keeps his sword of judgment sheathed.
He understands the instrumental purpose of life, and so mocks the approaching dragon,
Death.
And that my heart knows best,
And I remember blackberries so ripe they could be gathered with concentrated breath;
I remember the tulips, my compass, every spring returning to spell out our heritage;
I remember racing -- downy legs on hot horseflesh -- through tobacco fields toward the place where copper clouds meet Kentucky bluegrass;
I remember the land, something so secure – something that will outlast us both,
Enduring despite our limitations, our forgetfulness.
Line by line, I see the impression of his soil-stained hands on my heart.
I see us on different sides of the semantic chasm, bridge-building, plank by tender plank.
As we cry together, understanding the misunderstood.
