A. R. Johnson

When the fire is low and the moon is down,
               I think of the blind farmer,
               His world through a tunnel dimmed to dark
               But his spirit a light everlasting.
               I see his wrinkled, brown face and sweet, lopsided smile,
               His strong, thick hands flicking his stick
               That keeps him from tripping
               As he shuffles his feet to read the ground,
               Listens to twigs and leaves and brush, in broad day nocturnal.
               There is a map fixed in his mind of the fields and barns,
               The orchard and the creek bed,
               And across it run the lines that are his highways:
               Fence posts as guideposts, touched and true.
               Slow he goes, with patience that had to be learned
               And at a pace that allows him to sense more than we see.
               Though lost and mourned are the flash of a fish in the stream,
               The glint of sun on snow, the feathery tips of pines at dusk,
               The faces of his children,
               He knows them by scent or sound or what he remembers.
               He says he believes in the Holy Ghost.
               It taps him on the shoulder and says "Go there."
               And he follows.