“Country Communication” by Penny Duncklee
retreat and return
to an insular precinct
experience shared
of a proximate cause
common ken
tribal instinct
conveyed blood to bone
old familiar moralities
imprinting underside
surface of skin
final chapters of fiction
come filled with tense drama
but real life wants peace
at day’s end easy sunsets
untroubled by conflict
the sameness a haven
against changing times
best to live with one’s own
and to die among friends
in the smile of their light
tell the world to fuck off
its false progress
a thing to be loathed
keep the faith with a
close-in geography
front porch exchanges
that ratify values
repeating what ancestors
said in their prayers
for an unfailing future
*****************************
“Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.” – Samuel Johnson
