How shall we live?

A friend of mine asked if I had a poem on the theme of “How shall we live?” suitable to submit for possible publication in a little book of poems by Unitarians.  I looked in my brain cabinet and found this about life here at the ecovillage.  

How Shall We Live?       October 10 09

Husband the sun.

Dig the ground

long and hard 

through the soil and into the clay,

for burdock plants to search

deep

for blood-cleansing minerals.

Stroke the soil off the roots with your thumbs.

Marry the rain.

Plant  cucumbers 

with their growing tips pegged carefully to long stretched strings,

and a coyote will

slip between the rows

unseen,

(almost)

from this garden,

into the next.

Collect the wind in trees.

Build a shed for tools

with old barn boards

and make the courses not straight,

but perfect,

and a barn owl may rest on the roof

and eye the voles.

When night falls, draw in close around a fire.

Use your foot to push the log a little further into the flames.

Move the kettle over on the grill.

Make tea.

Sing to the child resting in your arms,

so that her gaze can no longer keep the glow

and she grows heavy with sleep.

Hold the moon gently in your cupped hands,

release it to rise

over handmade houses

and let the murmuring voices around the fire

spark upwards

in wiggly orange streaks to the night sky.

Grow old

with the young.