Memory of Mixson
John Clare stokes
Coming to Williston in sixty-seven
That summer this seventh grader
got his first job driving a tractor for
Clifford Mixson in Morriston
After nearly running over him
Teaching me the gears and clutch
Such a patient man
And so I began out Freddie Hale way
Spending all day for a dollar an hour
in the hay field
And at the end of day
I’d pull into the shade
And wait for him
To take me home
And if I broke down
There was no phone
And I’d just sit in the shade all day
In hopes Mixson would come
To check up on me.
A praise
Wendell Berry
His memories lived in the place
like fingers in the rock ledges
like roots. When he died
and his influence entered the air
I said, Let my mind be the earth
of his thought, let his kindness
go ahead of me. Though I do not escape
the history barbed in my flesh,
certain wise movements of his hands,
the turns of his speech
keep with me. His hope of peace
keeps with me in harsh days,
the shell of his breath dimming away
three summers in the earth.
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