Currently Grounded in Place

The Current

Having once put his hand into the ground, seeding there what he hopes will outlast him, a man has made a marriage with his place, and if he leaves it his flesh will ache to go back. His hand has given up its birdlife in the air. It has reached into the dark like a root and begun to wake, quick and mortal, in timelessness, a flickering sap coursing upward into his head so that he sees the old tribespeople bend in the sun, digging with sticks, the forest opening to receive their hills of corn, squash, and beans, their lodges and graves, and closing again. He is made their descendant, what they left in the earth rising into him like a seasonal juice. And he sees the bearers of his own blood arriving, the forest burrowing into the earth as they come, their hands gathering the stones up into walls, and relaxing, the stones crawling back into the ground to lie still under the black wheels of machines. The current flowing to him through the earth flows past him, and he sees one descended from him, a young man who has reached into the ground, his hand held in the dark as by a hand. -Wendell Berry

I currently feel grounded in this place,

And generously take what has been left before me.

I hope to leave a loamy soil,

For my descendants to grasp and to hold. CPW