Liber Saturni - Chapter 23

Verses

My grandfather sowed by habit, my father by almanac, and I by weather app; the seed remained unimpressed.

Saturn carried a sickle before people gave him a telescope.

A field teaches the same lesson every year and charges differently each time.

Planting is optimism performed with dirty hands.

Harvest is judgment with baskets.

We thanked gods for good grain and blamed ourselves for bad drainage, which seemed a practical theology.

Winter is not evil. It is simply expensive.

The barn is a memory built against hunger.

A cat slept on the sacks as if grain had been grown chiefly to warm her ribs.

Maybe abundance is exactly that: enough food that something useless may nap beside it.

Do not eat the seed grain, even when it looks like supper.

Do not worship scarcity either. Empty cupboards make poor moral teachers.

The old stories say Saturn ruled a Golden Age. Farmers know gold is a color seen briefly before cutting.

Every feast stands on somebody's labor, usually someone not invited to make the speech.

Leave part of the field untidy. Mice, birds, weeds, and luck all require margins.

If the year is generous, store. If the year is cruel, share before preaching.

At the end, return the stalks to soil. Nothing keeps a crown after threshing.

Then sharpen the sickle. Hope also needs maintenance.