That Reunion Feeling (2012, Marco Polo, Aggies) Poem by RIC BASTASA

the farmer asks:

Father, would you rather have me visit the church and think
about my farm

or that i work in the farm and think about God?

i listen attentively and i who have the nerves entwined in my bones
and embedded in my cartilages want to speak:

there is propriety in all that we do.

when you are in the farm work like a farmer and think about what you
can do with the farm,

and when you are in church praying, think solely about God.

i admire Dodot for raising it before the elders.
But Dodot is still strange, and to those who watch him closely

did not see it.