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 tribes people 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 has made their descendant, what they left
in the earth rising into him like seasonal juice.
And he sees bearers of his own blood arriving,
the forest burrowing into the earth as they come,
their hands gathering the stones 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 though 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

Time to plant garlic!