Emigrant

(for U. Utah Phillips)

Not from here.
Just passing through
from nowhere in particular.
Some little town
that got plowed under
to make way for the latest
the greatest,
to make way for the bright lights
and the best conveniences
that money could buy
like we've never known before.

And we sold it all, even ourselves
with bright eyes and hopeful hearts
to the slick suits
who never once knew
the smell of the rain
falling through the trees

But I'm taking up too much
of your perfectly manicured space
with my torn clothes and my hobo stories.
I guess it's time I be moving on.

Handywork

There are times when I miss working on the farm. I miss the repetitive motions that let my body work itself raw while leaving my mind to work on its own perturbations. Today I reshelved every volume of the Journal of the American Medical Association from pre-1900 up to 1960. If my wrists were on the outside of my body, they would be bleeding right now. But there's an honesty in the physicality of that work that doesn't exist when I get paid to feed papers into the bureaucracy.

I miss the fact that no matter how much I ran my mouth, the chickens still needed food and the crops still needed water. No amount of talking could make the fields weed themselves. The work was just work, day in, day out, every day, like breathing.

And the wind never did care what I wore to work. The sun was never much of one for small talk around the water cooler. The peas always could keep to themselves without too much trouble. I could work for days without having to talk to anyone out loud. The whole place told me its stories without ever uttering a single word. The way the engine in the truck would gargle, the way the fruit looked on the vine, the way the chickens gabbed all told a thousand little stories of give and take.

I don't know what I'm doing in this city, surrounded by concrete and drywall and artificial trees that don't bear fruit.