The punk was going to take
My cucumber
From my fence
So I clutched
My trusty shotgun
And I fired a shot
Way over his head
He scattered like so much buckshot
Having triggered his nerves
Like a fresh kill
Whose life would only ebb
A lessen all-too-familiar to mortals
Missing his heart
By a million miles
Would win me no award
As marksmen
Or neighbor
But sure enough
Would secure
My pride and property
For another day
My generosity unknown
For had he asked
A cucumber I’d have given
In unspeakable modesty
I am the grower of cucumbers
As well as
The builder of fences
And if I can’t have your respect
I’ll settle for your fear
Only growing
Outside my fences
This freshly grown poem sprung from a conversation I had yesterday with a new acquaintance in a coffee shop, perhaps appropriately with a poetry reading occurring across the room. This poem is based on a story told to me by a self-described spawn of an old hillbilly, now serving as a leader of Libertarians. Early in the conversation, I was threatened to be taken out back and beaten to a pulp, minus some snot. This is not the first time I have experienced such a first shot over the bow in a conversation with a new Libertarian acquaintance. As it was a public place and each of us apparently had some modest respect for the law, we could not compare manhoods directly. He did confess that his threatening manhood was in fact a joke. I suspect that there was a small truth to this.
While this poem is written in the first person, much like Adam or Cain and Abel, the story is of his proud hillbilly father. Those who know me would expect that it wasn’t my own story, except inasmuch as it is all of our’s story. I find the juxtaposition of a prideful swagger all-too-familiar with violence and a genuine down-home generosity as intriguing as it is commonplace. The true conflict is between pride and generosity — one of which can be defended with violence. Both the pride of the gardener, with his fence and shotgun, and the punk who dares steal from another’s labor, begs for something more, a deeper generosity. Sometimes a punk’s taking is innocent, as from a garden meant for all, that garden of eatin’ of which we have all experienced. Many times a punk’s taking is a lazy pride asserting that all is theirs for the taking, without regard to their neighbors. Of course, the gardener’s pride can lead him to mistake himself for the Gardener, the giver of all, who possesses a generosity overwhelming any value-added we may contribute by our labor. The fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, curses us with a fruit of awareness that competes with an all-encompassing awareness of the Gardener. That competing awareness is the builder of fences, which both cuts ourselves off from the one garden and cuts others off with our fences. The birth of private property possesses us. Scarcity becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, yet our profits remain strangely unfulfilling. We look to grow fears outside our fences faster than thay grow within. We learn to plunder with ease, not work, generous abundance. And plucked from the vine such fruit dies. Many a firstborn son has been planted at the hands of fearful gardeners a tempting to secure puny labors. Such Abel-bodied young men stand as a testament, a very old testament, to the Cain-do attitude of private profits. The first fruit is offering your best to God and neighbor. The only sin: hoarding your first for yourself, and offering only your excess to God and neighbor. What is it that would steal our hearts? All fruits, and gardeners for that matter, die; only first fruits are born again and again, turning death into life — an offering Abel to banish fear, and transcend scarcity. The fence between life and death is only the fence we truly know and fear. And everyone knows: it takes a thief to know a good fence. If you should cross a thief, or perhaps two, generously invite them in, or scarce join them. May there be one fate shared: good for all.
