berry

I keep meaning, each weekend, to toss up a few posts from the arts section, or travel, or style. I forget, though, that weekends find me much rarer behind the computer. But, before heading to bed tonight, I will achieve this new tradition of weekend human interest posting.

Over the week, I had a good conversation about the writer and farmer, Wendell Berry. Berry lives in Kentucky on his farm. I've read more of his essays than fiction, and even less of his poetry. Here, then, is a piece of the latter. For April.


Kentucky River Junction

to Ken Kesey & Ken Babbs

Clumsy at first, fitting together
the years we have been apart,
and the ways.

But as the night
passed and the day came, the first
fine morning of April,

it came clear:
the world that has tried us
and showed us its joy

was our bond
when we said nothing.
And we allowed it to be

with us, the new green
shining.

*

Our lives, half gone,
stay full of laughter.

Free-hearted men
have the world for words.

Though we have been
apart, we have been together.

*

Trying to sleep, I cannot
take my mind away.
The bright day

shines in my head
like a coin
on the bed of a stream.

*

You left
your welcome.





The poem's from Collected Poems: 1957-1982, and can be found here.