I have often second-guessed my career as a lawyer, wondering if I would have been better suited as an ornithologist, a cosmologist, an English teacher, or a writer. It doesn’t matter anymore, really: I’ve been a lawyer for 25 years. And I will be the best municipal lawyer I can be until I retire, and happy to do it. Throughout my career, I have found opportunities to be both the intellectual and the romantic, the lawyer and the poet, the analyst and the naturalist. In my poem “Farmer” I explore the concept of being who we really are in the midst of circumstances that, we think, may not suit us but in which we find ourselves. And, maybe we are right where we need to be: learning, stretching, becoming.
FARMER
Now,
looking back thirty years,
I would to have sidestepped
a torturous jurisprudence.
I would, rather, to have studied
the sturdy soil,
the art of growing things.
Still, today,
from my desk,
I till and I plant;
I nurture and hoe out the choking weeds,
looking to the harvest.
Resolutions are my cash crop,
statutes and prosecutions.
Policies and proclamations
yield forthcoming fruits.
The pen is my plough,
reams of paper
my fertile, furrowed fields,
poems my flower garden,
where butterflies condescend
to radiate.
Rabbit Lane 
You have an incredible ability to make the poems “come alive” with your word choice. How you construct a connection between your chosen craft, the law, and nature is a gift. A fantastic poem.
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Thank you so much Cathy!
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The pen is my plow…I love it!!!
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Thank you Patsy!
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This is very thought provoking
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Thank you! May you have a blessed day.
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Dad, this is fantastic! A high quality, moving poem.
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Thank you, son. I look forward to the bounteous and tasty harvests your pen produces.
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“The pen is my plough,” — you’ve given me a new vision to ponder.
And both the image and the rhythm of the final two lines are lovely.
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Thank you! If we look, we can find meaning and purpose in whatever our circumstances.
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