What We Need is Here

I could actually chart my life with the poems I have found waiting for me in magazines, newspapers, books or received from friends in cards and notes. Often when I am not feeling like writing or reading I open one (of three by now) folders and sift through it. Here is a poem I actually had on my desk. It is by one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry. It connects into a longed for moment as I work with my family to create our farm, our sanctuary. It reminds me that our sanctuary may not neccessarily be in some imagined place but within us.

I think poetry, like all art forms, speaks its own truth even seperate from the poet's vision itself. So it can open a window into each of our lives, maybe clarifying or helping us come to terms with things we have hidden from ourselves or just providing a new point of view or information. I think that is especially important as I see fewer years ahead of me than behind me.

WILD GEESE

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp, sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds them
to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.


Wendell Berry