I drove north on farmland in my time
and met a buggy outside any
and one of its young Amish women
had a smile for whatever I might
have been
           unhurrying on my way
through secularity to a hill
they did not know and would not need to

I don’t need to read Jacob Amman
to know he must not have gone too wrong
if the smile of one young follower
can get to a quotidian mind
like that
          offering some higher love
as part of a communality
with horse and earth and nameable light

/

Rodney Nelson