Departing the Sensory

Hilling Black Aztec with my father's widest hoe, I cut weeds and pull chocolate earth to hills of four and five stalks. It's not easy work and best done early. Halfway on my last row I found myself not unlike Black Aztec with roots in another soil and still with memory of the network of mutuality. And as I hilled this seed crop, I felt my core strength building, stronger together, the only way I know how to live in this America that holds no container capable to contain our grief. We can no longer escape. We are the world once again.

Pausing, I stand at the top of the world now well into February with my concerns half your wood, half your hay behind me. I stand in the clarity of my neighbor's expanse of sky it might be ten degrees I move snowshoed above the earth our uplands a frozen sea I am in shirtsleeves barehanded to stillness where the bottom of my fear drops away. - Jay Robinson, 2016