being human

I heard Coleman Barks read this poem of his in a small group years ago, and it has continued to stir my heart. When we think of other-centered love, it is inextricably tied to the wonder of the human being, and our complex relationships with each other.

Higdon Cove

Give it the next fellow.

Not the ten dollars, the help.  No mistaking

What he meant or saw the afternoon as,

A fine chance.  The 1965 tractor started up,

Though one of its brakes kept sticking, amusing him.

I’d gotten as far as I could, trying to find a new walk,

To the gate bar across the road and backed back and onto

Soft shoulder, slid helplessly into the ditch, hopeless

To maneuver out of.  Walked to the nearest house.

He came to the door still chewing his lunch,

Then towards the barn, making a polite apology.

You’re heading for that tractor, aren’t you?

If it won’t start, we’ll get a horse.

The man who wants no credit, or even to shake hands,

Too busy with what needs doing, holds his arms

Close in and sidles by me in the barn

Like I’m a ticklish passage, me holding out my money.

Give it to the next fellow.

There is a huge holly tree next to where I glided to a stop,

A solid thigh-trunk white-splotched

And stretching deep under the ditchwater.

Beauty, but not such as this man is,

beyond any tree.

 

Coleman Barks, Winter Sky: New and Selected Poems, 1968-2008

2008 University of Georgia Press