Poetry by Sheri Hostetler


Not of This World

 I am like none of you. You must recognize
deep in me how different I am. You're all
Wonder Bread and drive-ins. I am fertile
fields, head coverings, memories of martyrdom
like yesterday, hymns without organs. The
Bible whispers in my ear at night, it will
not keep still.

But my people do. Die Stille em Lande. We
never talk. Quietly we move, quietly the
fields are plowed, in quiet are the dishes
washed, the sheets pulled taut, silently the
hay flung high atop the wagons. Our horses
clip clop in a virtual vacuum. All around
us pins drop, and, still, we are still.

Nature loves our vacuum, blesses us with a
bounty you cannot imagine. Look at our barns,
they are filled with sweet hay, hay without
end, stacked fragrant, stacked sweet. We
do not talk but we smell the sweetness of
hay everyday, oh stranger, you know not what
you are not.

I am not like you. I talk with you, laugh
with you, make love with you, break bread
with you, I will even die with you. And my soul
will rest atop a haymow on Weaver Ridge while yours
goes to heaven.

(Click here for an interpretation of this poem by Libby Glover.)
(Click here for an imitation of this poem by Libby Glover.)
All poems posted with permission from the author.
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