FIELD WORK
(for Ambrose)

Let me resume
my words announcing a psalter
of tool, earth,
kingdom of the earthworm,
stake and furrow ...
where there is ground
that never goes fallow.

Let these hands
wake to the ways
dank, soft, leaf-rot,
the command of my fingers
darkening, waiting to tap
the trek of root, runner and vine.

In the pale half-light
where the air is alive
with ochre, russet,
and the assertion of stones,
let my body remember the pull
of this fair patch of soil,
the blister of the sun
touch by touch and how
my labor rests in tne hickory
handle of a hole as it
harnesses a deeper power.

When day's done
let sleep's secrets
nestle like seeds
in my cranial fields:
dreaming of laced ferns, molten
mosses, rusted dogwood and laurel.

Then let me rise
with pollen in the corner
of my eyes and the sun
blessing my branches forever.

Bro. Didacus Wilson, T.O.R.

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