Reading between lines carved upon dull, grey earth
I see the pattern of planting and reaping,
sustaining cycles, compulsion to labor and to live,
to wrest dominion from the tight clutches of chaos.
Here there are many lives entwined in oral history
I hear reverberations of long-told tales
having sunk deeply into the ground along with sweat,
blood, progenitors long-buried, and livestock offal.
From far off – say, the interstate or airway lanes –
the wakening urban-dweller, traveling, sees nothing
but muted textures: landscape, trees, and hay awaiting dawn,
his soul more tuned to crosswalk signals than to farms.
But I have that old mythic eye passed to me by my father –
fading of course, yet oft perceiving still
the rolling, rhythmic pact twixt men and earth.
A misty and archaic way of life recedes before the morn.