In his extended essay Living the Sabbath, philosopher Norman Wirzba writes, “Though God’s resurrection power has been unleashed in the person of Jesus Christ, we still await the time when God’s ‘new creation’ is fully realized.” That time of full realization the church fathers Basil and Augustine referred to as the “eighth day,” the day in Wirzba’s words that “stands beyond creation as its final summation or conclusion.” William Carlos Williams is not often thought of as an eschatological poet, and I’ve no doubt it would be wrong to make a claim that he is, yet his little poem “The Red Wheelbarrow,” when approached with an eschatological imagination, is surprisingly supple and giving.
Unlike much poetry, the pattern of Williams’s poem is visual, not rhythmic.
Read out loud, the single sentence is starkly prosaic. But its appearance on the page—four two-line stanzas, each stanza four words long, arranged with three of the words on the first line and one on the second—announces the poem is not presenting language as usual.
The opening lines:
so much depends
upona red wheel
barrow
are more challenging than they appear. What is this “so much” that depends on the red wheelbarrow? And what meaning of depends should we be reading? Is the wheelbarrow truthful, so we can rely on it to be itself? Is it solid, so we can lean on it for support? Is something contingent upon its presence? Or does something, the meaning of the poem perhaps, hang from it? That poets delight in the ability of words to escape the bondage of univocal meanings makes our questions unanswerable. We read all the meanings, even as they contend with each other, all at once.
I own a red wheelbarrow, and I can testify to its honesty. It is simply itself; even when my neighbor’s four-year-old turns it upside down, crawls under it, and calls himself a turtle, it shouts wheelbarrow! It is also solid, able to support my weight should I fall into it exhausted from hauling compost. And that compost tells me there is something contingent upon the wheelbarrow—the garden itself. The wheelbarrow, in the garden, is a tool, on which the success of the season hangs. In the poem it is a word on which the meaning swings. In both the poem and the garden, it is an artifact of human endeavor. One more thing about the wheelbarrow: it is red, an extravagant color, a joyful color indicating the celebratory nature of work.
The wheelbarrow, however, neither stands nor means by itself. The third stanza of the poem:
glazed with rain
water
suggests that so much depends on something more than the wheelbarrow. Human endeavor is not enough. The garden is contingent on more than labor. The grace of rainwater is necessary, a blessing from beyond. What the poem is giving us is an image of collaboration. Neither work alone nor grace alone will produce the garden.
The collaboration is revealed to be still more involved in the last stanza:
beside the white
chickens
Both human labor and grace stand beside the chickens, the representatives of nature in the poem. The fullness of life, the so much of the poem depends upon the interdependence and interaction of the wheelbarrow (human work), the rain (the grace of God), and the chickens (the world where it all takes place).
In the stillness of the poem on the page, this fullness comes to life. It is imaged for us, made imaginable for us. Interestingly, though human work is central to the poem, no human acts in the poem. The wheelbarrow, the figure of human action, is at rest. The peace and wholeness, the harmonious completeness of the poem, is a kind of Sabbath. It is a foretelling of the eighth day.
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John Leax (pronunciation: leks) was for many years poet-in-residence at Houghton College in Houghton, New York. His articles, stories, and poems have been widely published in anthologies and in periodicals such as Image, The Christian Century, The Other Side, The Cresset, The Reformed Journal, Christianity Today, ASLE, Christianity and Literature, Radix, Cold Mountain Review, and Midwest Quarterly.
His books of poetry include Reaching into Silence (1974), The Task of Adam (1985), Country Labors (1991), Tabloid News (2005), and Recluse Freedom(2012). His novel, Nightwatch, was published in 1989. And his nonfiction works include In Season and Out (1985), Standing Ground (1991), Out Walking (2000), and Grace Is Where I Live (first edition 1993; revised and expanded edition 2004).
Leax gives several readings and lectures each year at various colleges, libraries, and conferences. He has read at Calvin College, Concordia College, Nyack College, The Kings College, Asbury Theological Seminary, Gordon College, St. Joseph’s College, SUNY Buffalo, and others. He has been featured as a panelist and seminar leader at Calvin College’s biannual Festival of Faith & Writing.
He is a member of the Conference on Christianity and Literature, The Chrysostom Society, The Orion Society, The Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, and the Nature Conservancy.