SERMONS

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

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