Avery’s Insight
Avery, 1934, age 41Chugwater, Wyoming
I could never make an engine like my brother Leith,
am not good at math like Carson.
Since I can remember, worlds have spun beyond what I
make sense of. Mr. Hubble recently announced he’s found
other galaxies. Ours isn’t the only one.
Whirling stardust, giant holes in the sky, spacious gaps
between starlight. Worlds lie hidden inside what’s seen.
The stars on Orion’s belt could be galaxies.
I know how to turn a plow to till. Focusing on one row
at a time is the way I move through a pasture, as well as
how I make it through the world. Sometimes when I’m
preparing a field in the morning beneath the bowl of sky,
the plow moving rhythmically through the soil, the world
turns into a kind of music, and I sense everything is dancing
to a melody just beyond what I can hear. I look at the horizon
and sense I’m a pebble in a field that can be turned by a plow.
Everything is larger than anyone will ever understand.
Avery, 1952, age 59
Chugwater, Wyoming
"For cryin' out loud, you’re as slow as molasses in January.”
How many times had I heard someone tell me that? It’s not a secret. I’m not like others. Never was good at school, While others burrowed into mines but I didn’t cry about being slow. to cut coal, calculated numbers, or hauled stone for railroad bed, I’ve risen each day to light spilled across fields, clouds lazing by. Nearly sixty years I’ve walked this earth. Despite its drought and ice, despite a world rattled in war’s despair, and jolts from aging bonesas I bump along gravel roads, I inhale the wheat’s slow, ripening as it rustles in the sky’s blue arms. Every day the world ripples with wind. Grit mixes with cloud. There’s no need to forgive myself for what I couldn’t change. I’ve received my daily bread. I pick a few wheat kernels, rub them in my hand. It’s a good world to give myself to.