the question

When you understand,
Do your muscles relax, sinews limpen and skin soften?
Does your heart race, the bow of your smile quicken and quiver?
Do the tiny hairlings on each limb rise up and test
the breeze rushing between us?
Do you knit your brow with needless bewilderment because you are shocked
You finally see what I see and think what I think and
hope that it will fit always as it does right now?

And what do the words sound like, how harshly do they thump against your cochlea, bump against your own,
as they rise from my mouth, worked up and wound round through my bowels, into my throat without getting caught and then sliding between sharp whittled accented tonguing and even sharper teeth..?
Is the intonation atonal or attuned to yours?
What is the nature of being understood and being understanding if you do not understand?
Will we run to meet, across an acre of cultivated crops or spelunk a river bed with stagnant waters alongside,
Are my thoughts and I
A flock of geese migrating,
a pair of bald eagles mating,
one mosquito with malaria waiting,
For you,
For me and you?

Berry picking

Wendell Berry is one of my favorite writers. Sure, he is white, and a male of the species. But there is a tender fight within him that comes shining through on behalf of land and lovers (two of my favorite inventions). So when a man like that has the opportunity to whisper in the President's ear and takes the opportunity to speak well of a woman's love for tending earth, I wonder at all the good that will come of it.

Say what you will about Obama; he is a politician after all. Though I am qualified to accomplish a great many tasks, I am not qualified to cast the first stone upon hypocrites. Furthermore, I know I run the risk of contradicting my previously admitted distaste for folks who take gardening privileges for granted. But Berry's nuanced love for properly tending our land on a grand scale is more closely akin to my concerns than it might seem at first blush.

At the end of an article describing the awards ceremony to honor other artists alongside Mr. Berry, Obama is quoted as having encouraged us thusly:
“We have to remember that our strength as a people runs deeper than our military might; it runs deeper than our GDP — it’s also about our values and our ideals that each generation is called to uphold, and that each artist helps us better understand.”

and I sounded my barbaric yawp accordingly.

You can read the entire article for yourself if you need some good news for a change.