A Light from Sophia
by Amy D'Amico

Reprove not a scorner, lest he hate you: reprove a wise man, and he will love you. Proverbs 9:8

The politically angry have been swirling
opinions far past the editorial page
of the Medina Journal Register and I hope
(after caterwauling) that it is just the
nature of upheaval. I'm only swatting at it
a little blinded the way a setter must be
temporarily, by the dirt cast into the air
as row on row of cabbages, apples, corn,
soy, tomatoes, pears or garlic are set
into the earth on the farms near here.
It'll show in the Spring. One man writes
about greedy victims and their sense of
entitlement, the whining and demands, Up
With Romney. I react, commenting:
"Yours is the whine of a wealthy white man who
has never lacked civil rights." I do, Sophia,
gain his hate. See, I learn in cycles, a little
more gleaned in each turn of a thresher
over the crop. I learn in seasons: a new
yield every August. You don't take on faith
what you know will be. I think those
who love me have been waiting for me
to outgrow squally porcupine
for several decades. I walk out into the
rain-soaked yard in LL Beans but was more
moved by the fawn I found there at
seventeen, graceful as a liquid tree, white
patches on her hindquarters,
than I have felt since then, as if a newer
vision would crowd her. Her intense be
here-ness held her, and my own quills were
smoothed by her humble drink from the
flooded grass. I chased her into the woods.
She can't afford to learn as slowly as I do.
You think it is too late for me
to learn not to react to the scornful? I seek
you this next season; I imagine
you are the drink that fawn took,
for I don't need another image. It is just
a little deeper into visions I want to travel.
The more of the same visions I see,
the more I will stand still,
like the repetition of film, or snow.
Sophia: I will be completely here.

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