by Tim Ornelas
Penniman, John Ritto. Meetinghouse Hill, Roxbury, Massachusetts. 1799. Art Institute of Chicago.
WHEN WE READ WENDELL BERRY
My childhood was semi-nomadic.
We left homes and churches faster
than we found them. I grew up
with a fear of all things stationary
and swore to live a life chasing
every horizon.
And I so learned to make new friends
but struggled to make old ones.
I spent my savings on plane tickets
and took a backpack and my girlfriend
around the world.
But when we read Wendell Berry
and for the first time saw
our own rootless and restless
lives—we chose, at last,
a second path, the one
less traveled.
And on this path we’ve experienced
the supernatural grace
of meal trains and neighborhood
chats and slow-baked friendships—
those great miracles of community in
our transient world.
TIM ORNELAS
Tim Ornelas is a husband, father of two boys, youth director, and English student at a local community college.
His work has been published in The Clayjar Review and The Copper Quill, and he is currently working on self-publishing a collection of poems about looking for the presence of God in the ordinariness of life.