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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflj@intrex.net>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Requiem for a Lunatic
  • Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:17:51 -0500


http://lists.ifas.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind0812&L=sanet-mg&T=0&O=D&P=27678
Subject: Requiem for a Lunatic
From: Steve Sprinkel
Reply-To: Sustainable Agriculture Network Discussion Group <[log in to unmask]>,
Steve Sprinkel <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:40:15 -0500

On the 11th of December Eric Kindberg died.
I planted eleven beds of vegetables thinking
about September, when I had ripped that ground thinking
of his love affair with deep tillage.
I stopped to retrieve from the field the old metates
that the padres had smashed wondering if
Kindberg would have said something like
“ That’s always been the way we do things.”

“ The people in power,” he might have said,
“ have to keep the rest of us down. That’s the game-
that’s the way the thing is rigged.”

“ That’s why we have to keep pushing-
you can never let up. Can’t quit.”

He admired people who wouldn’t quit.
“ Oh man, you should be meet my man Mark, he never quits!”
Well, I won’t quit! The thin vein of glimmering
soulfulness that belongs to you if you won’t sell out
is the most precious matter available. Once you quit your dead,
but Eric Kindberg never quit so he can still be alive.

I dumped the rocks out of the bucket and packed
up the full moon seed bags watching Francisco
carry his cubeta of tomatoes out of the row.
The sun was lowering as we sorted for the kitchen
finishing off some red, started to talk about death again.

Francisco’s shirt had a blatant ring of salt around the collar
the tide of work had set there like crumbled shells.
He told me when his uncle died
everyone wanted to fight over the body
but when the uncle was alive Francisco let him live in a little house
in the middle of a cow pasture
so that’s where they laid the body and lit the candles.



  • [permaculture] Requiem for a Lunatic, Lawrence F. London, Jr., 12/12/2008

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