Wonder........................

William Sidney Mount          Boy Hoeing Corn            1840

                            Hoeing

I sometimes fear the younger generation will be deprived
     of the pleasures of hoeing;
     there is no knowing
how many souls have been formed by this simple exercise.

The dry earth like a great scab breaks, revealing
     moist-dark loam -
     the pea-root's home,
a fertile wound perpetually healing.

How neatly the green weeds go under!
     The blade chops the earth new.
     Ignorant the wise boy who
has never performed this simple, stupid, and useful wonder.

-John Updike

Ed. Note: Several versions of this poem found amid the intertunnel have the last line as "has never rendered thus the world fecunder."   I like my version, as found in Garrison Keillor's Good Poems, better.