Sleeping Preacher

Sleeping Preacher is the title of the latest book I've read, my 5th so far this year. It is a slim volume of poetry, written by Julia Kasdorf, and heavily influenced by her Amish/Mennonite heritage juxtaposed against her choice to leave that community and live in New York City. When I was a student at Messiah College, she came there and did a poetry reading; I must have bought her book at the time. In any case, I have read it several times through the years and thoroughly enjoy it each time. I think many of us, even if we don't come from quite as conservative a background as hers or live in quite as modern a setting as hers, can relate to the tension of appreciating many elements of our past while not choosing (or not being able) to replicate it.

I was thinking to include one of her poems here, just for fun; but I'm having such a hard time picking one! I guess I'll choose the first one of the book.

Green Market, New York
The first day of false spring, I hit the street,
buoyant, my coat open. I could keep walking
and leave that job without cleaning my desk.
At Union Square the country people slouch
by crates of last fall's potatoes.
An Amish lady tends her table of pies.
I ask where her farm is. "Upstate," she says,
"but we moved from P.A. where the land is better,
and the growing season's longer by a month."
I ask where in P.A. "Towns you wouldn't know,
around Mifflinburg, around Belleville."
And I tell her I was born there.
"Now who would your grandparents be?"
"Thomas and Vesta Peachey."
"Well, I was a Peachey," she says,
and she grins like she sees the whole farm
on my face. "What a place your folks had,
down Locust Grove. Do you know my father,
the harness shop on the Front Mountain Road?"
I do. And then we can't think what to say,
that Valley so far from the traffic on Broadway.
I choose a pie while she eyes my short hair
then looks square on my face. She knows
I know better than to pay six dollars for this.
"Do you live in the city?" she asks. "Do you like it?"
I say no. And that was no lie, Emma Peachey.
I don't like New York, but sometimes these streets
hold me as hard as we're held by rich earth.
I have not forgotten that Bible verse:
Whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back
is not fit for the kingdom of God.