[audioplayer file=”https://admin.rattle.com/audio/DanceHandscape.mp3″]
He was teaching his students
the parts of a plow
while reading the Georgics
in Latin: a learned poem for
learning the parts of
a plow, how to raise trees,
ways to summon bees from
the carcass of a cow.
He was teaching his students
in a town wedged in hills still
tended by farmers
and vintners and modern day
wainwrights (H&J Tire Co.).
But he did not know
what a share-beam was,
what lolium is, what drags do.
He knew, however, that
vomis (“plough”) is another form
of vomer (“plow”) and that both
words can mean “penis”
and that labor (“labor”) conquered
all other meanings over thousands
of years to mean now
that we still work with our hands.