I'm Bred For Farm Work, And For

The Voice Of God Does Not Pander, Offers No Five-year Plan, No Long-term Solution, Nary An Edict. It Is Small & Fond & Local. Don't Look For Your Initials In The Geese Honking Overhead Or To See Thru The Glass Even Darkly. It Says The Most Obvious Crap - Put Down That Gun, You Need A Sandwich.

But I'm Not Ready To Stop Listening To The Screwed-up Inner Voice That's Been Ordering Me Around For A Lifetime. My Head Thinks It Can Kill Me... And Go On Living Without Me.

If You Lie To Your Husband - Even About Something So Banal As How Much You Drink - Each Lie Is A Brick In A Wall Going Up Between You, And When He Tells You He Loves You, It's Deflected Away.

We Are In The Grip Of Some Big Machine Grinding Us Along. The Force Of It Simplifies Everything. A Weird Calm Settled Over Me From Inside Out. What Is About To Happen Has Stood In Line To Happen. All The Roads Out Of That Instant Have Been Closed, One By One.

The Lesson You've Got To Learn Is The Someday You'll Someday Stagger To, Blinking In Cold Light, All Tears Shed, Ready To Poke Your Bovine Head In The Yoke They've Shaped. Everyone Learns This. Born, Everyone Breathes, Pays Tax, Plants Dead And Hurts Galore. There's Grief Enough For Each. My Mother Learned By Moving Man To Man, Outlived Them All. The Parched Earth's Bare (once She Leaves It) Of Any Who Watched The Instants I Trod It. Other Than Myself, Of Course. I've Made A Study Of Bearing And Forbearance. Everyone Does, It Turns Out, And Note Those Faces Passing By: Not One's A God.