Agates

13 Replies

Agates

Often, when our hired hand took a break from work,
he’d comb the land for agates, then return with a smirk,
pockets full of shiny stones he’d removed from the clay,
bragging to my father that this was his lucky day.

Down along the river, on sunny days they shone,
mixed in with the detritus of  rocks and sand and bone.
You’d have thought that they were diamonds he’d removed from the earth,
but he didn’t judge their beauty simply by their worth.

He had learned to capture happiness anywhere he found it,
sorting out the beauty from what he found around it.
A simple man, for him it was not something he could buy.
He found beauty in a blade of grass or clouds up in the sky.

Lucky man, therefore he found beauty everywhere—
In his wife’s shy smile and his children’s flaxen hair,
wheat fields spread like blankets before the combine’s blade,
he gloried in all the riches that the earth had made.

 

Prompt words today are agate, smirk, remove, often and land. Image from USGS on Unsplash, used with permission.

 

13 thoughts on “Agates”

  1. Unknown's avatarAnonymous

    Nice one, I too have picked up many such pretty stones and some still have a special place in my “rock garden”~! My son now has my “arrowhead collection” many picked up in the US, but others picked in central, South America and even the Sahara~! Interesting how much alike they are no matter where they came from~!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
  2. Mason Bushell's avatarMason Bushell

    What a beautiful poem of a miners life.
    I do wish humans would stop mining for things we don’t need though, I mean we have billions of tons of gold in storage and no we still have to destroy landscapes, pollute and kill rainforests and seas to get more. Its selfish and disgusting of these people.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply ↓
        1. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

          I often forget details in my own poems, let alone those of the poems of others! When people comment, I always have to look back and read the poem again myself because I can’t remember precisely what I wrote… even a few minutes before. Wonder if I should worry!

          Liked by 1 person

          Reply ↓
    3. lifelessons's avatarlifelessons Post author

      Now that I reread it, I see that there is nothing to suggest what the young man’s work was, so you were perfectly justified in thinking he might have been a miner. Since my dad was a rancher/farmer, hired hand has that connotation for me, but wouldn’t for anyone else.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply ↓

Leave a comment