Fallow

By Emily Miller

When farmers plant a seed

—More often, a field of seeds—

There comes time to let the land lie.

Of course it’s not a time that suggests itself to the hardworking

The planner

The pinstriped soul;

But the studious who know what they grow

Know the time.

It was God who taught men to study, when He said,

“Rest your land every seven years”:

To study their own hearts

And what it might be that fiddling by the fire would do to them.

For resting is the hardest work of any

When the sun springs early and the moon rises late

Over fields where fireflies drift like cottonwood

Instead of dizzy grasshoppers fretted by the plough.

Meanwhile the children squeal about their feet

Delighted that daddy’s home

And a once-young wife lights joy in her eyes again

And love in the move of her midnight hands

While the old songs and stories grow lovelier by the day.

Strange that the sharing of one’s self,

That tricksy, much-renouncéd thing of the devout,

Should, too, be one’s best gift:

How strange that God would make it so

When, by all accounts

(including His),

The world seems made for working.

Emily Miller is a senior PP&E major. At leisure she explores things: thoughts, foods, books, streets, and areas of the country, preferably with family or friends. She works hard, listens closely, laughs (too) readily, remembers details. She loves country dancing and golden retrievers, and hates pickled beets.