Responding To Wendell Berry Poem by Max Reif

I read a poet
who farms the land,
the land he grew up on.

He'd gone off to the city,
taught in the university,
then became inspired
to go back home.

His colleagues tried
to talk him out of it.
'Think of your career, ' they said, but
he would not be dissuaded.

That was long ago.
He's happy with his choice.
His feet are on the ground, and words
come deeply rooted from his pen.

But I, born in the city's entrails,
all Fire and Air
with no Earth in my chart,

read his work and wonder,
'Do I need to be a farmer, too? '
troubled by the question:
if I'm only building castles in the sky,
what good am I doing?

And then, I felt a new poem,
just like dreaming —
unusual for me —

asleep, I am a fallow field,
and when I rise,
a green and dancing field of corn.
I open my arms and give
my golden Life to the hungry,
and then lay down
again in the dreaming Earth

and I wonder,
was this poem my Answer?