Indie Film in Pittsburgh - College of Humanities and Social Sciences ...

wine. What an incredible power!
What a putrid stench.
Characteristics of the Work of the Wise
By Benjamin Saalbach-Walsh
The wind sweeps by in a cold steady drive
bringing a shower of leaves from the tree.
These are the thousands of marvelous works
of someone with clear-seeing eyes.
I watch them fall to the soil…
They will decompose for the seeds.
Elsewhere, people are raising their seed
but living the rat race. Their drive
for status doesn’t teach the soil
the practice of raising a worthwhile tree.
For they narrowly focus on fortunes with their eyes
and every good citizen “works.”
Lutherans say forget about Works
That the Kingdom of Heaven has no seeds
they can see. Some eye
their faith without being driven
to grow nuts or leaves on their tree
and pass away forgetting to turn into soil.
Greatness can often or occasionally soil
intent, and when only works
are the aim then the trunk of the tree
is forgotten, and so all the seeds
are weak from their limited drive
and there’s not much more than is clear to the eyes.
Wildly staring and wide-open eyes
are frantically searching for long-fertile soil,
as the plows that pass over drive
them from calm. And the difficult works
feel unsettlingly hard and we don’t plant the seeds.
I’m half-hesitating, half-meditating beneath this tree.
But this man is a respectable tree
who does what he can as he works
With a smile he buries the seeds,
thrusting them into the soil