To make food farmers in my corner of the world cut and burned and ploughed. Every spring the frost heaved up a new crop of field stone. They broke plough teeth, turned the ankles of oxen, broke the backs of farmers and their sons, ended up as fence piles, thorny now and lichen crusted, overlooked, unremembered, the very tears of our contending with the land and its Gods.

Our psychic weather is turning up rock in the pasture of our days now, year round. Breaking the teeth of our resolve, turning the ankle of our heart’s dexterity, crippling and compressing the young visibly, field stone of opinion and prejudice and posture is turning the visionaries among us into divisionaries.

With whatever we have of idleness forced upon us now our work could come ever clearer: Testify, and magnify, and earn whatever memory and honour might be allotted to us by those to come.

These will be meetings at the crossroads, where the stone fences begin or end. We will be custodians of crisis. We’ll wonder on how it has become as it is. We’ll wonder what citizens of a troubled time do, once the call and the summons and the plea has gone out. I’ll listen for you, out in the field.