“are we doomed to chase the illumination more than its source,
to love a picture more than the absent lover it renders?”
plunging his fingers into
the grass, he wriggles his hands,
loosens the soil, then places
the tip of the shovel at its crust.
pressing down with his heel,
he finds the trickle of an underground
flow. ‘we use our heads,’ he
says, before taking the tractor
to the plough, rows, reams, of
the best dirt, teeming with
life for new fruit, fresh
leaves. roots burrow in
tunnels, in dens, one garden
left for another, bigger
than a dream the size
of light. time is measured
in the whittling of
a ploughshare, a regime
of bounty and harvest, the
wrestling with the ache of backs,
the ache of shoulders, the ache
of a blazing barn. what is
invisible is the herb
like a weed, furrowing
through wet soil, its lush
glimmer of green replenished
by the creek, an image
with enough timbre to
overtake the darkness
that still keeps us
from one another.