It is the rural way, the hands-on explanation
of work, of time invested or squandered
in pursuit of peace for a fleeting moment—
if only an adieu to the bone-weary gloaming
as she pulls her covers up,
as the dogs make their circle
of scent posts, and as the cows
call their calves together
to welcome darkness. A separate species
of farm and range, of fence and tree row,
of the harvest, track and furrow following
each season of the sun for the life of the soil,
for our time on this earth, we speak
the universal sign of gestures and looks,
in secret code that unlocks local sayings,
the un-riddled truisms that begin and end
the legends that muddled here before us,
and found their way to offer progeny:
an ever-changing strain of human beings
that listens for the hymns of the old ways.
This is our church, our adaptable Divinity
that transcends all things to expose grace
to a slowing metronome plodding home—
a prolonged rapture towards the end of days.
drycrikjournal 