Peasant Poem by R G Rampy

The mercifcul exigencies of a man's life
make it hard for him to forget it: time.

When he turns his mattock in the loam,
he may consider that his father and grandfather
turned it there before him,
as his son and his grandson would
in the years to come.

His life grips its roots
down into the soil of time.

He sees fewer years and more hardship;
still, his time stretches long before and long after
his allotted days of sunlight.

He almost cannot choose but dwell,
living and working under the canopy of his fathers.
Possibly they are in his sight each day,
buried on the high hill overlooking the spire.

He expects to lie there too,
gathered to his fathers,
exactly as if he were no ordinary farmer
but a king of Judah.


By Anthony Esolen