To Wendell Berry

“In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.” – Ecclesiastes 11:6


To Wendell Berry

Mr. Berry, sir, you have garnered,

gardened, my respect.

Though not all aged men be wise,

you affirm that wise men must be aged,

by years, labor, love, years.

Your life is mine

because I own your words,

though it is they that hold sway.

Despite the vastness of my inexperience

your life lives in faith,

in beliefs through which I have yet to walk.

You have commended poetry to me

and then politely closed the gate between us.

The fence divides, splitting the horizon.

I gaze across with bated stillness.

Your lines, phrases, thoughts,

proof of poetry’s spirits,

and your words boom with the intoxicating bass of truth.

“Employ verse and flourish your wisdom.

But know that all of worth has been put to page.”