Wednesday, May 23, 2012

"Field Work" - Franciscan Poetry & Prose

(Corn Field at St. Bernardine Monastery; Hollidaysburg, PA)

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.


– by Bro. Didacus R. Wilson, T.O.R.

(© copyright All Rights Reserved Wilson, Richard S.)


(Bro. Matthew, T.O.R. working in the field.)

1 comments:

CJC said...

explicitly different from the current Australian terrain of drought in winter. An encouraging, and nourishingly abundant poem. wholesome, positive. Verdant even. am very glad to have discovered your site whilst looking to find a priest from the Franciscan Immaculate at Munster in W.A.
Cheers, May God Bless your good works.
C