Poetry is the Salve for Everything: For Aspiring Farmers
Do you ever just have a moment where you fall to your knees thanking whom or whatever you bow down to (God, the Universe, the Earth, the Buddha, your Dog) responsible for the creation of poems? In the short weeks of early October, before my apprenticeship at the University of California Santa Cruz Farm and Garden ended, I was wandering the streets of downtown Santa Cruz on a Saturday and came across a man sitting behind a vintage typewriter. The man was poet Kevin Devaney, who will write a poem for any occasion, person or situation of your choosing at a sliding pay scale. With a graduate degree in poetry, “It’s actually the thing I am most qualified to do in the world,” he explained .
A poet for hire, this was perfect! Poetry was the salve we applied to every situation on the farm—introducing class topics, pre-meeting vibe-setting, pre-harvest pump-ups, for gatherings and vigils. Poetry filled the void when all other words escaped us. Typewriters were also especially sacred to me. My 1960’s Royal was among the worldly possessions I brought with me to the farm. I like the satisfying, clear ding that signals the edge of the margin and the animal instinct that returns to me when I type. I feel the sureness of the words that come, much like the immediacy of pen to paper.
My typewriter perched on the desk in my UCSC Farm and Garden yurt
“I have a situation,” I said. He leaned toward me listening, not taking notes. “I am a farm apprentice at the UC Santa Cruz farm. I am one of 38 aspiring farmers from all ages, backgrounds and walks of life. We came from all over the country and the world, uprooting ourselves from home and community to learn how to be organic farmers. After six months together we have fallen in love with the work, the vegetables, the flowers, the farm, and each other. Now we have to leave and figure a way to make a living as organic farmers. And we are somewhat heartbroken. Can you write a poem for us?”
Kevin looked at me from across his shiny black 1930’s Remington typewriter, nodded confidently and said “yes come back in 15 minutes and I will have a poem for you.” I loved this idea of direct marketing for poetry. Kevin’s streetside writing desk/storefront reminded how satisfying it was to sell the vegetables we grew to real people at our stand at the entrance to the university. Not only did we fetch a higher price selling directly to the consumer, but it felt more meaningful to have an exchange with the people who would be enjoying our produce and flower bouquets. Sometimes we even got tips!
The UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden market stand, where apprentices learned how to sell farm goods
I strolled down the streets, past the cute shoe and surf shops, and the people eating meals at fancy restaurants feeling an unexpected wave of contentment. I realized I did not need to buy a thing, other than this poem. The past six months of simple living on the farm was the perfect anecdote to consumerism. All of my basic needs were met. I slept in a comfortable single bed in a 10 x 10 yurt with four large screened windows that looked out to a cypress grove. I washed my tired body in an outdoor shower heated by the sun and draped with sweet-smelling honeysuckle blossoms. I ate healthy meals cooked with love by my fellow apprentices sourced from the vegetables and fruits that we grew throughout the season. I even picked and arranged a fresh bouquet of cut flowers for myself every week.
The only thing missing was the right words to describe this ache at having to fledge this nurturing environment and find another place to begin my new life as an aspiring farmer.
When I got back Kevin said he needed 5 more minutes because he had to change the typewriter ribbon in the middle of writing, so I strolled into the bookstore. I made a beeline to the poetry section and pulled a book by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, off the shelf.
“There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god. And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier. I look; morning to night I am never done with looking. Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around As though with your arms open.”
I am also constantly looking with my arms open; wanting to reach out and sweep all of the world—both beautiful and devastating—close to my chest so I can feel it more vividly. Looking in this way honors the simple, honest goodness and sadness of our daily lives. I am grateful for poets like Mary Oliver who capture “the things you can’t reach.”
For me, poetry is a basic need, like food, oxygen and water it sustains my soul. Poems are like healthy snacks, the kind that keep me from flagging on a long hike in the Grand Canyon or a big harvest morning. On most days I have a book of poetry in my farm shed, car, or in my backpack. You just never know when a collection of words might be the medicine you or someone else needs to survive or celebrate the day. Poet and teacher Ellen Bass says that poems help us see that there is another world, and it is in this one. I have always been drawn to those other worlds within. There were many times in my life where a poem had swept me back from the depths of despair by naming my pain and helping me realize I was not alone. Another great living poet, Naomi Shihab Nye wrote the sentence “You are living inside a poem” on the blackboard for he poetry students. The garden was giving me poems at every turn with its daily wonders, if only I noticed and jotted them down. I painted this quote on an old piece of wood on the gate of the garden I tended at Orchard Canyon on Oak Creek. I wanted to be reminded that this way of living is possible, if not necessary, and to offer this idea to all of the guests who visited the garden.
Our gardens serve as the best place to “practice living inside a poem”
It is hard to find room for poetry when you are busy. The only way you make space for poems is to create still and quiet places in your mind. Even if you are folding laundry or sweeping the floor, or shoveling dirt there is room for a poem if you allow every wild thought through the gates. Perhaps that is why farming and poetry make such good companions. Wendell Berry knows this. Many harvest mornings his words took us on a journey within as we carried them with us to bunch rainbow chard leaves with our hearts overflowing.
I began to be followed by a voice saying:
"It can't last. It can't last.
Harden yourself. Harden yourself.
Be ready. Be ready."
"Go look under the leaves,"
it said, "for what is living there
is long dead in your tongue."
And it said, "Put your hands
into the earth. Live close
to the ground. Learn the darkness.
Gather round you all
the things that you love, name
their names, prepare
to lose them. It will be
as if all you know were turned
around within your body."
And I went and put my hands
into the ground, and they took root
and grew into the season's harvest.
I looked behind the veil
of the leaves, and heard voices
that I knew had been dead
in my tongue years before my birth.
I learned the dark.
“Song in A Year of Catastophre” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry
When I returned to Kevin’s Pacific Avenue street desk he handed me the poem typed on a quarter of a letter-sized, recycled rectangle of paper. His smudged fingerprints from the midstream ribbon change trailed across the page like animal tracks. The poem was perfect. Tears sprang into my eyes as I read the words he summoned to the page. I thanked him with him all the cash I had in my wallet, which sadly was only ten dollars. Assigning monetary value to his creative effort was not possible because it was worth so much more. I wanted to give him a teaming box of our vegetables in order to equal the amount of heart he extended to the work. If there are two occupations that are guaranteed to keep your bank account running on the empty side, it is being a farmer or a poet. Yet both are necessary to feed our bodies and souls. Whenever I need to be reminded of this I think of Kevin and read the poem he wrote for us, my voice thick with emotion and gratitude.
