LPiA-22 Nov. 10

[RiverNotch]

Country Song


I'd bowed myself to solitude:
prayer and fasting, my attitude.
No commonwealth of man would bring
salvation to this wretched thing,
however pure the company,
however new the country.

Then through the silence broke a song:
a buoyant pitch, a foreign tongue.
A modest giggle, once you saw
this hairy, humorless hee-haw
come stumbling through a thicket,
come stumbling through your country.

And again and again I stumbled,
through woods, through fields of stubble,
just to see that smile bloom again and again,
to make the heavens rain and rain:
oh, bless me with your company,
your joyful, ample country.