Pasture

A poem about sweet irrelevance

A picture I took of one of the horses at the equine therapy ranch my kids used to go to. This particular horse, named Luther, had a habit of gnawing at the fence post, which destroyed his teeth. A result of past trauma, said our therapist.

Put me out to pasture
Near a cool stream and under the shade of old oaks and hickory trees
Where the golden light filters through the leaves that rustle
As the soft wind whispers in my tired ears.

Put me out to pasture
Where my misty eyes can watch the passing of days 
and the changing of seasons with familiar grace
And where the grass is sweet and tender for my worn-down teeth.

It will be a welcome thing
When my youth is spent
When I’m no longer useful
For the plow
For the battle
For the race
For the sacrificing of my soul
To some communal pot that does not feed 
But feeds on its members. 

It’s a peaceful prospect.
Of mornings that begin slowly with the rising of the sun,
Not the ringing of the bell.
When time is marked not by the clock
But by the rites of daily bread 

Let me find there some friends 
With whom to bathe in sweet remembrance 
Of love and passion, 
Of sorrow and heartache.
And then let us watch the young foals 
Jumping and turning in innocent wonder—
New to the bright world that has not yet 
Broken them to the bit and the saddle.
That has not yet taught them that they are 
Owned by powers they cannot comprehend.

Put me out to pasture. 
Where my only work is to carry the wisdom
Of a life well-lived,
To sit with the dying as the veil thins into gauzy translucent curtains,
And to converse with the spirits of long-departed angels 
Who have waited patiently for my world to become quiet enough for me to hear them. 

I promise 
I will not protest when the reins are slipped over my head for the last time
And the shoes taken from my feet.
I will be easy to lead by only a slack rope and a kind voice. 

Put me out to pasture
Where my feet will walk slow and careful
Where I may linger in the twilight of sweet irrelevance 
Moving gently towards the deepening shadows,
Unafraid of the last long sleep. 

I wrote Pasture in October of 2021. I remember the day was warm and golden. I was sitting outside with a friend who was journeying with plant medicine. Sometimes when I’m sitting quietly, holding presence for someone else who is moving through an altered state, I feel my own mind begin to relax into an openness and presence that invites inspiration. In that space, with the sounds of the breeze moving through the leaves, casting dancing shadows on the wall of the house, I found myself yearning to stay in the silence for as long as possible.

It was a peaceful place. I wasn’t responsible for anything other than holding the moment and my friend. My worth and sense of purpose were not dependent on what I could produce. Only what I was being.

And then for some reason, my mind drifted to my dad. I thought about his years of hard work, laboring for our family, fighting for his faith, and churning within a thankless system that consumes the individual in the name of progress. I thought about the way his health declined over the years and how slow he walked these days. I thought about how little the world cared for what he had done. And how fewer and fewer people would even remember who he had been.

It made me feel tired too.

It made me long for irrelevance. Not loneliness. Just less need to feel wanted for what I could make.

The poem, “Pasture” flowed from a sense of simultaneous fatigue and rest, and that connection to my father—an old war horse, worn down by the demands of the capitalist machine.

It was a strange duality. I wanted to stop producing for the machine too, but at the same time I found myself engaging in an act of creation that I hoped I would someday publish… in the machine.

We don’t even call it art anymore. We call it content. Everything writers and artists produce becomes the digital crude oil for the content machines—the grease for their perpetual motion. While a few creators rise to the top, most writers and artists profit little, if anything from their creations. And yet, we feel so grateful and content to have our content heard and seen, even if for a brief moment.

But it’s fleeting. In the gold rush for the ultimate resource of human attention, creators must continue to churn out more content, or become irrelevant and forgotten. It can become a crushing obligation.

I haven’t published on Substack for over three months. Each week that passed without publishing, I found more and more solace in the silence—and more and more release as paying subscribers, in the absence of new content, cancelled their subscriptions.

“Good,” I thought. “If no one pays, then I have no promises to keep.”

Today I updated my “About” page and my subscription model, acknowledging that at this point in my life, very little of my writing can be regular or timely. I have been writing, but I’ve been working on my memoir, not my Substack. Ultimately, if forced to choose between the two (and most weeks I am forced to choose) I choose the memoir.

I’ve poured myself into it steadily and slowly. It’s a good thing. It’s progress. But I don’t know where that slow, steady progress lands me other than the hinterlands of irrelevance. The world just moves too fast.

For those of you who stay, thank you. For those of you who feel like buying me a virtual coffee from time to time, thank you. But I need this space to be a place without obligation and without the fear that I won’t be worth it. So I’m not making any promises about what you’ll receive from me and how often.

I am a writer, but I am not a content generator. For me, saying “I am a writer” is like saying “I am a woman” or “I am a mother.” It is both my identity and how I am made. It is how I process my reality. It is not a measure of my production. There is no threshold for proving the word “writer” belongs to me or that I belong to it.

I write. Sometimes.

I speak. Sometimes.

And sometimes I wait and listen.