Save Us from Our Saviors

I have discovered Eden in the backyard of a Veterinary Clinic
in Upstate New York.
Over there all the good boys souls departed.

On site crematorium.
Sanctuary for grass.
Eden.
Agrarian heaven.
Must be.
I can think of no other reason they haven’t
flipped the whole thing over into gardens.

Adam cranks his Ford 8N tractor with a thumb on cracked rubber.
His sister has a cooler of beer outside in the sunshine.
There’s ten thousand things alive in the lawn
and a billion years dead in the bed below.
Be low.
And you too will know.
The voices of ten thousand things.

The Adam up the road sings Tom Petty while he mows.
And Eve is asleep in their bed. They share everything.
Except for parents. White violets in thin grass.
Purple ones in the woods. Fringed on the fringes.
White petals with purple veins and singes.
The trees we plant and those we can’t stand tens of feet
and hundreds of years apart. Roots tangled like long ghostly
strands of the same spider’s web.

I have discovered the true sun. And the true earth. Its daughter.
And the first life. And the grandparents of plants.
Grass that tells a different sort of story about God’s favored ruminant.
The four in one. Four stomachs. One hungry lamb. Poor grass. Outnumbered.
Ten thousand to one dandelions yawn up cotton at the wind.

I have discovered Eden.
In the prayer.

Dear Lord.
Save us from our saviors.

J.T. Homesley is an English teacher, writer, actor and farmer currently based in the Piedmont of North Carolina. A recent graduate of Lenoir-Rhyne University in Asheville, he holds a Master of Arts in Writing. Follow his journey at www.writeractorfarmer.com