There is something fine and good in working the soil,
To stir and seed and tend and beckon to bring forth its yield
Few endeavors are so noble as this shaping and dressing of the land,
Since, from the beginning man was placed in the garden for work
Men of old, grandfathers and great-uncles, knew of this prize,
The beauty of sweat dripping from the brow into furrowed earth
A hard day’s labor credited with quiet evenings on a cool porch,
Living so close to the ground and being better for it
To brush so broadly as, “a simpler time” might be naïve,
Even still, it captures something of the wonder a slower-paced life offered
Fathers and mothers and children knew their lives by the splendor of seasons,
As it is written, a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted
Yet from the abundance and increase of those days gone by,
Came the freedom to turn from the land and leave it behind
And as we moved farther and farther away from the land,
Time seemingly matched our distance with an uptick of pace
Certainly blessings have been wrought from this migration,
Sickness and plight have been fought under its banner
But with the purchase of an easiness and convenience,
Surfaced a void that hungers to be filled night and day
An emptiness that looks on beauty without notice,
As if to see through completely the glory surrounding us
Instead we stand ready to cast our trinkets of activity into wells of stillness,
Anything to fill the silence in our heads lest we actually know ourselves
We stare at little devices and claim that mankind is progressing,
While a meeting of faces on the street means eyes will be averted
Yet progress without a stabilized core is mere change,
And change for the sake of ease brings with it loss
Our growing distance from the land has left us unaware.
