Compost of Dreams

Thursday, March 8, 2007

I DO !



I DO
or ( The farmboy's I Do! )


I am my own slave.
In the primary world there is no
escaping the menial others wage slaves for
I drive myself with a whip of ‘have to’
- an elemental way of thinking…
But I do

'Do you take this earth?' the preacher
intones. 'To have and hold to
till death you to earth return?'
And my solemn vow 'I take you'
gives small change for earth taking seed of me…
But I do.

No! - I want mistress of the moon…
Oh any, any, comely star will do...
Love me some other, other...Other!
Infidelities are what I'm brewing
An easy lay. Lie! Why stay earthbound?
But I do.

Rings? With these shackles I farm
Wild oats back into a soil manure
and the house of earth I lay up
shoulders my sweat the daylong. True,
weeds thrive, work is my curse…
But I do.

Wayne David Knoll © 1987
Pub 1993 in ‘Compost of Dreams’
Broadcast-Publication on "POETICA' ABC Radio National, May 2006 and January 2007
Written out of reflections on a wrestling of the demon duty and thinking of my farmer brothers and my father who farms on after 50 years (and still does in 2007). Feeling powerless in abilities turned to small account. Yet this is a small parable of fidelity in spite of other pulls, and even while wresling with the angel as Jacob did, asking for a better deal. But that can soon become the story of bondage and fear of faith. Judith Rodriguez called this a splendid poem.

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About Me

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I am a 4th-to-6th generation Australian of Silesian (Prusso-Polish), Welsh, Schwabian-Württemberg German, yeoman English, Scots, & Cornish stock; all free settlers who emigrated between 1848-1893 as colonial pioneers. I am the 2nd of 7 brothers and a sister raised on the income off 23 acres. I therefore belong to an Australian Peasantry which historians claim doesn't exist. I began to have outbreaks of poetry in 1975 when training for a Diploma of Mission Theology in Melbourne. I've since done a BA in Literature and Professional Writing and Post-graduate Honours in Australian History. My poem chapbook 'Compost of Dreams' was published in 1994. I have built a house of trees and mud-bricks, worked forests, lived as a new-pioneer, fathered-n-raised two sons and a daughter, and am now a proud grandfather. I have worked as truck fresh-food farmer, a freelance foliage-provider, been a member of a travelling Christian Arts troupe, worked as duty officer and conflict resolutionist with homeless alcoholic men, been editor/publisher of a Journal of Literature for Christian Pilgrimage, a frontier researcher, done poetry in performance seminars in schools and public events.