Conversations at Fairview
Now low the grass blades bow as even’ winds rear,
So soft the sign that we have come so near?
My questions linger crossing o’er the void,
I ask: Is hope fulfilled? Is hope destroyed?…
Good Eve to you, dear Dad, it’s been some time,
Since our last talk in heartland’s hard-heart clime,
Now I’m here at your heartland legerstow,
Big sky, good earth, where unending winds blow.
Gone twice to war across the tossing sea,
There’s things I know and things I know of naught,
There’s things I’ve learn’d yet things I think I ought,
To know a little more, who might I be?…
Good Eve to you, Grandpa, it’s been some time,
three-fourths my life after your last bell’s chime,
They said I was too young at your last breath,
But I say that’s an unkind shibboleth.
It never was the same with Grandma gone,
I’m told you were joyful, the house was gay,
It comforts me to think you not withdrawn,
I hope It’s true you were always that way?…
Good Eve to you, Great-Gramp, it’s been some time,
To know you now has been an uphill climb,
A story now I have from those who knew,
A life, a gift, a boon to which I hew.
I’m told that Uncle Dee was most like you,
A kind and gentle man’s the one I knew,
A score and six were your last years alone,
You were then kind, and calm, not sad? peace known?…
The very ground remembers each asleep,
And holds each gently in her loving arms,
The evening dark her day’s appointment keeps,
The tender night, her mood, her might, her charm.
Thin thread remains, my only means to steer,
I cling to these surrounds, unclear, yet near,
In time but brief a wiser self displays,
Tis slow and hard to live out better days.
Thanks for the conversations.
Between Two Worlds
The cedars drip both mist and night,
Resolute, between two worlds they await the light,
With them and within their embrace stand I,
Drinking the wind, tasting the sky.
The gulls hover, motionless above the forest crown,
The sea breeze a gentle lift, cradles them on high
A frozen tableau, they need not come down,
While drinking the wind, tasting the sky.
Before me the night, behind me the dawn,
Only stillness required, to stand tall, to stand by,
Awaiting revelations, what answers then drawn,
Drinking the wind, tasting the sky.
Maelstrom
The camera view
Is but a window which through
Other worlds are seen.
Cataract heart near,
Roiling, boiling, verge and veer,
Clashing, crashing cloud.
Below maelstrom flow,
Linear, laminar loops,
Languid, lazy, slow.
PrayerSong
I.
First light. First sound.
Morning light. Mourning sound.
Is it?
Mourning, that is.
The mantra a melliferous penta-vowel, one step only above the floor,
Whooo – AHHH – whooo-whoo-whoo.
The meter a syncopated five-four,
The prayer contemplation, not petition.
Or is it?
If night’s Omega, five graceful notes?
A small world at rest?
If day’s Alpha, a quiet plea to
Pass a larger world’s test?
II.
Dappled light marks the transition into
The Mountain Hall.
Great Firs and Hemlocks demanding
Reverence in the High Cathedral.
But the choir entire is soprano,
Hermits though they be.
Their anthem wings oe’r the Temple Floor,
Provides welcome at the Chancel Door.
A diatonic two-tone, starting on the rise,
The meter rather constant, the line-length more inspired.
The line’s end a chromatic half-step down,
The melody floats above, around, the Choir Loft unseen.
The prayer a celebration, expression
Exuberant, engaged and bold,
Inviting those who enter here:
Welcome, enjoy our home.
The wondrous Creation behold.
Thursday Market
Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands and the mouth.
Lanza del Vasto
I love Thursday morning at the market. I love the sights, the sounds, and – obviously – the smells. But even more, I love the happy people here. They really do seem happy. They are smiling, relaxed, taking their time as they wander the vendor’s stalls. There is a sense of community that is at once strange and yet strangely familiar.
August, 1973. In a young life marked by only one major prior decision – trying my luck at college or signing up for the service – I’m staring at an even larger decision: am I going to drop out of school or return for the start of my junior year? The farmer for whom I’ve been working has made an offer. An attractive offer. A quarter-section is mine to farm and ranch, if I’m interested.
On the Shortgrass Prairie of the High Plains 160 acres isn’t much, but it’s not nuthin. Forty acres are in grass, 120 have been farmed, the usual crop is winter wheat. There’s the old farmhouse, long-abandoned, somewhat dilapidated, but redeemable. The old JD4020 is available for working the ground, the even-older JD55 is available (sans umbrella, let alone a cab) for bringing in the harvest.
There’s much I love about this life: the opportunity to do meaningful work; the feeling at day’s end that the day was well-spent; the pleasant sensation of tiredness before going to bed; the deep, satisfying slumber under a night sky lit only by the moon and the stars. It’s ten miles to a blacktop road, nearly a hundred to the nearest town with a television station. I’ll have to put up a tall aerial to tweak in a station. Not sure that I’m interested.
Surprising to some, I love the landscape, the sharp, angular features courtesy of the dry land that this is. You know where scarce water can be found, just look for the trees. There are not many of them. The sky is enormous, sunrise/sunset potentially spectacular, and the night’s expansive canvas majestic.
So why the hesitation? I’ve hired out for farming for a number of years, it’s what you do in a land of family farms. All the little communities dotting the prairie are farming communities. You might be a Townie, but the family farms are the reason the little towns exist. Mr. Jefferson would have been proud.
The primary reason for the hesitation? Now into the second term of Richard Nixon (and near its premature end), the country is a couple of years into The Great Agricultural Revolution, and I’m concerned by what I see. “Get big or get out!”, the language is clear, unmistakable, the words uttered by a prophet of deep conviction. And one who can do something about it.
Earl “Rusty” Butz is the Secretary of Agriculture, and leading a Crusade. America is wasting its workforce and not realizing its potential by having over half its population engaged in farming and living in rural settings. What’s needed are fewer farmers feeding more people so that others can move to the cities and power-up the great might of an industrialized nation.
No Jeffersonian, our Mr. Butz. A more Hamiltonian vision is before his eyes: an urban, industrial vision. And thus the great agricultural revolution has its name: America: The Land of Industrial Food.
I can’t say that I got out. I never got in.
II.
In some respects, it seems like Moses’ long journey through the wilderness. It’s been a half-century wandering to get to a potentially(?) more-promising land. The heartbreak of watching The Heartland wither and decay as the family farm disappeared. The heartbreak of watching the Obesification of America, the decline of our national health. The heartbreak of watching people become disconnected from agricultural food, and the concomitant loss of a healthy relationship with their food and with each other. The heartbreak of watching food deserts develop and spread across landscapes where they did not exist before. The heartbreak of growing food insecurities, and the waste and brittle fragility of long, complex supply chains.
Wendell Berry called this at the time (speaking of prophetic voices): eating is an agricultural act, not an industrial one. It is a grateful, graceful, and reverential act. It is an act of communion, of community. Breaking bread together is at the heart of the human community, at the heart of individual and community health. Eating is not a geopolitical act, food is not a weapon. If we are to regain a sense of individual and community health, eating cannot be an industrial act.
Find the shortest, simplest way between the earth, the hands and the mouth.
Our lives depend upon six inches of soil. Six inches is the global average, and not all soil is usable/useful for growing food. If the Care of Creation is at the core of who we are and how we should live on this Earth, then the care of the soil which nurtures and sustains has to be at Creation’s Heart. Know and steward the land that sustains us; know the food that sustains us; know better human health and relationship.
III.
Walking the market. There’s the Honey Guy. We stop by for our honey and to chat for a few minutes about how the bees are doing, and where they’re doing their magic. Next up is the Ice Cream Man, we’re just sampling today. The latest is his lavender ice cream, it’s better than I would have thought. Before our shopping starts in earnest, I stop and get a scone from the woman who runs our favorite bakery stall. We have a route and a routine for market day, the vendor’s locations and the mid-morning cadence familiar, comforting.
The family farm folks are here as well. We know them, have been to their farms, know their produce, know their properties, know their operations. Some lean toward berries, most toward vegetables, some toward decorative flowering plants. Their care in creation, their Care of Creation, is obvious, appreciated.
The sense of community, this sense of taking the time, enjoying the food and the fellowship found here, I’ve known it before – a lifetime ago. The familiar echo, at first faint, seems to be growing, and, in growing, sounds like?… A choir?
