"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.)