Grateful for Wendell Berry

Thank you Wendell Berry for your beautiful life, poetry, works, compassion, integrity, and love.

The Sunday Morning Silence Comes at Last
(Sabbaths 2007 XI)

The sounds of engines leave the air.

The Sunday morning silence comes

at last.  At last I know the presence

of the world made without hands,

the creatures that have come to be 

out of their absence.  Calls

of flicker and jay fill the clear

air.  Titmice and chickadees feed

among the green and the dying leaves.

Gratitude for the gifts of all the living 

and the unliving, gratitude which is

the greatest gift, quietest of all,

passes to me through the trees. 

~ Wendell Berry ~
from Leavings

Photo by Chris Whatley on Unsplash

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There Is a Place You Can Go
(Sabbaths 1998, VII)

There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light

on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.

Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come

to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be

little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.

None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable

the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.

~Wendell Berry~

Photo by Wei Fukuyama on Unsplash

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