The long nights of winter offer no rest; awake, I ache, my
face wet with worry from false thoughts and hurtful memories. Oh Pensée, wrap
me in wonder and wool; pull me out into the day. This cot is cold, and old pinewood
stained dark with tears and scarred deep with penknife scratchings of the names of the
wounded in this room, from the war before this war.
My name is of no importance; the same as tens of thousands,
says the enumerator. Neither steam engines nor search engines will find my
bones tomorrow, so I take my own penknife and shave a point to this pencil, and put to paper one last pursuit. Names carved in wood and stone do not matter
much; we are each and all, forgotten in time. The least and the most grand among us will be forgotten. Only the wonder of life remains.
So, walk with me through the cities unseen, out beyond the
empty stone towers. Carry no coins; sow seeds that are not for sale, along the side roads
and forgotten railroad tracks and timber trestles on the west side, the wrong
side of town, in the fallow fields where your fathers once grew cash crops
of cotton and cover crops of red clover. Plant fruit trees and berry bushes
close to the path, and know that someday, off from the distance, a hungry soul
will walk that way seeking sustenance. Plant ideas of days where there is only one of us, and that is all of us, and all of everything there is, and know that someday, off from the distance, a hungry mind will walk that way seeking solace. Your name shall be Seeder,
and I shall be the annalist, to write your name forever.
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