Quarter Year

Last year, through a storm that killed hundreds of people, I clung to the handles as snow slapped my face. Snow froze my hands, cold cramped my calves. I asked, “Is there anywhere you’d rather be?” And each time I asked it I still answered, “no.” Beauty can starve away pain.

This wall builder chooses warm shoes for wet mornings. He nurses weak embers in detailed notes. He sleeps with the sun and sows with the moon, then listens in bed for his pulse. He’ll talk in his sleep to the knocks of the rocks who keep knocking for most of the night. They measure the silence – he finds that it’s long – because presence is slow, almost stopped.

While pruning the vineyard I channeled the vision of walls that were weaving through woods. How much is it worth to work without sensing? I’d try to work in awe if I could.

I turned off my words, forgot about home, and abroad, and my story and plans.

I watched myself standing and noticed this grass and followed the arc of my hand.

I started to sense, as my vision got tighter, “I’m working with land just to eat, though my body is keeping my consciousness shining, it too will soon die and be meat.” I was dirt moving dirt, food moving food, earth moving earth, just to be. And as long as I work with the dirt and the food I’m letting the earth move in me.

In this place where land’s fingerprints run from its veins, he strains to extract a large stone. The rocks knock together to punctuate breezes, each heartbeat measures each breath in his throat. The wind and the rain will weather the stones, this land, his body and work. But I can still sense them, and I’m still trying to tell him I’ll listen as long as he talks.