He Always Corners Me

He stands too close,  

hands moving like windmill blades,  

spinning tales about plowshares and crop rotation.  

I nod, caught in the orbit  

of his unblinking passion.  

The room hums with quieter conversations,  

but he carves a groove in time,  

shaping fields from syllables.  

“Imagine the oxen,” he says,  

as though I could conjure their breath.  

I sip my drink,  

feeling the weight of centuries  

pressed between his words.  

Did I know barley was sacred?  

That soil remembers everything we forget?  

He leans forward as if proximity  

might plant wisdom in the fallow  

of my polite attention.  

Somewhere else, laughter erupts,  

an escape I no longer need.  

Because amidst the labyrinth of his devotion,  

I see not a scholar,  

but a man chasing meaning  

in the furrows of a world  

he insists on loving.