Wendell ~~


Let me tell you
of my love for you
How you have set my blood
on fire, over
and over again.

A man I do not know
have never seen
and yet whose words
for close to fifteen years now
have spoken to me
over and over and over again
Have pierced my heart's home,
created light and love
and longing

Among my small human prides
is that I know a man who has stood
in your presence and conversed with you
about the ways of farming, and perhaps
of poetry, too, for he is a poet
as well as a dairyman
The webs of this world are a mystery to me,
but I know you have always been in this
child/girl/woman's heart, unknown and known
You have always been company and
companion

And I thank you for taking up
the traces early, and keeping to them:
The farm, the history
the prose, the poetry, the politics;
For walking the marges carefully
and remembering to bring them back
those little lights, those glimmers,
for remembering and sharing
and passing them on

I can never forget the possibility
of a farmer in Peru falling out of his field
and have the pictures from elsewhere
in the web to prove you right
had I ever had a moment of unbelief. . . .

I love you. And thank you.




jjl
8 July 2008