CS Jackson
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

The Shepherd’s Heart

Tonight, a warm southern breeze slinks it’s way through the ridges, and hollows.

And here I lie on a bed of the finest hay that once waved easily to the blue skies above the Shenandoah Valley.

On this moonlit night though, it insulates me from the winter ground, and smells of fresh cut grass from the summer past.

I find myself reflecting upon a mind that is sometimes troubled, but most times peaceful.

At what may be midlife, I wonder why the answers never seem to be as clear as the stars and moon above my head.

What am I supposed to be, supposed to do, supposed to feel?

I work a job that I’ve learned since I was nineteen, but now it feels as though it was never supposed to be.

I only find comfort, find solace, find peace, while surrounded by hills, hollows, grass, and the animals I raise.

I was born into a family of farmers, who shaped me, made me, and molded me. But now I find myself far from that place, and lost in region that runs at a frenzied pace.

My peers strive to climb the corporate ladder but I just can’t find the desire.

“I” just want to lie here on the side of a blue mountain in the moon shadows of four loyal, and giant, dogs while trying to figure out how to make it my life.

I’m running out of life you know, and so are you.

After all, nobody gets out of this one alive.

I cannot die knowing that I didn’t live the life that I should have lived…that I was supposed to live.

Perhaps I’ll find a way to make this work, to make it “my” work.

My mind wanders, my mind wavers, my mind gets lost in a sea of thoughts. But it only seems to be at peace when I am here.

Surrounded by goats, and dogs, and ridges, and hollows.

So there is my answer, my calling, my passion.

It’s taken nearly a half a century to find this answer. Why was the path so long, and why so arduous?

Can I do this?

I don’t know.

But if I die while trying… it will be a good death, and a good life that was worth living.

An honest life, like the farmer’s that made me.

I’ll live it for me, not another man’s profits.

And these are the inner pieces of me…

-CS Jackson

CS Jackson

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Contemplations from the sometimes troubled mind of a goat farmer lost in corporate America.