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A Lexicon for People Who Don't Talk Too Much

Does anyone still say he runs
a right smart cattle? Does anyone

believe the man who's pucker-mouthed
and runs those cows is doing right

or being smart? If you have heard
his whoop or watched his dewlap quiver,

if you are ready to accept
a holler and watch the cows become

a lowing line that moves from hill
to bottomland and breaks itself

to silent dots before the moon
reweaves the field as heaven's cloth,

if you cannot escape the fact
that cloth is finely woven, then you

will never doubt that the woman who says
she's bound for yonder when the day

arrives will make the river glad
when she tests it with her baby toe

and strides across it, or her wake
will be remembered by the river

as a joy, the likes of which would be
untelling if it ever was

before, but sure to be back then
when God was just a little thing,

the river just a bitty trickle,
and all things in the main were small.

-Maurice Manning, 2007