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Posts Tagged ‘Wendell Berry’

Earth Day — April 22, 2021

Posted in Art, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2021| 4 Comments »

[poems by Gary Snyder, Wendell Berry, Rose Fyleman, David Radavich]

an offering from Craig Kittner . . .

Piute Creek
– Gary Snyder –

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.

A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

“Piute Creek” by Gary Snyder from Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Gary Snyder

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an offering from Alana Dagenhart . . .

The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature, 1836

Poet, will you put the parts back together? The seed, the roots, the petals that have been thrashed and trampled? The bits that once meshed and fit now distracted and ignored? The air we can’t taste, the sunlight we can’t breathe, the stone beneath our feet, the water in our hair? Who will put us back together and put us into the places where we belong, all together?

Several friends have offered poems that speak to them about our Earth and which offer to gather us all in together to celebrate Earth Day! I’m posting their offerings April 21, 22, and 23. What do you see? What do you hear? What do you notice? What do you feel?

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an offering from both Lynda Rush-Myers and Kitsey Burns Harrison . . .

The Peace of Wild Things
– Wendell Berry –

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

“The Peace of Wild Things” by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems (North Point Press), © 1985

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an offering from Kitsey Burns Harrison . . .

Mice
– Rose Fyleman –

I think mice
are rather nice;
Their tails are long,
their faces small;
They haven’t any
chins at all.
Their ears are pink,
their teeth are white,
They run about
the house at night;
They nibble things
they shouldn’t touch,
and, no one seems
to like them much,
but, I think mice
are rather nice.

“Mice” by Rose Fyleman (1887-1957)

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Roundleaf Yellow Violet; Viola rotundifolia; Mountains-to-Sea Trail above Brinegar Cabin

an offering from David Radavich, his poem . . .

Enough

Rare is better:
The price soars
when you lack
what you need.

A poem carries
everything
in your pocket
like a mind.

Love can be
stored in a cell
whose DNA
heartens life.

Music is soul
saving, the simplest
math and finding
one solution.

O earth that is
rare and good,
sing to the unclean
with your seas.

“Enough” by David Radavich, originally appeared in Iodine Poetry Journal

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[original artwork by Linda French Griffin (c) 2021]

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Earth Day Eve — April 21, 2021

Posted in Art, Imagery, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 21, 2021| 4 Comments »

 

[poems by Joy Harjo, Wendell Berry, Mary Hennessy]

an offering from Debra Kaufman . . .

Remember
– Joy Harjo –

Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn, that is the
strongest point of time. Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth, how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life, also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their
tribes, their families, their histories, too. Talk to them,
listen to them. They are alive poems.
Remember the wind. Remember her voice. She knows the
origin of this universe.
Remember you are all people and all people
are you.
Remember you are this universe and this
universe is you.
Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you.
Remember language comes from this.
Remember the dance language is, that life is.
Remember.

“Remember”; Copyright ©1983 by Joy Harjo from She Had Some Horses by Joy Harjo

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There is something we want to hear that poetry speaks to us. We don’t know what it is until we feel its vibrations. How could we know? Do you only see what you know you want to see and never turn around and the redbud has burst into bloom? Do you only smell what you know you want to smell and baking shortbread never wafts you into Nana’s kitchen?

Poetry wants to say to us the thing we didn’t know we wanted to hear but deep within us we do know and do desire. Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. / Remember language comes from this. (Joy Harjo).

Several friends have offered poems that speak to them about our Earth and which offer to gather us all in together to celebrate Earth Day! I’m posting their offerings April 21, 22, and 23. What do you see? What do you hear?

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Linda French Griffin

an offering from Catherine Carter . . .

A Purification
– Wendell Berry –

At start of spring I open a trench
in the ground. I put into it
the winter’s accumulation of paper,
pages I do not want to read
again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the sun, growth of the ground,
finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise;
have been inattentive to wonders;
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse
of mind and body, I close the trench,
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.

“A Purification” by Wendell Berry from New Collected Poems. Counterpoint © 2012

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Plantainleaf Pussytoes; Antennaria plantaginifolia; Mountains-to-Sea Trail above Brinegar Cabin

an offering by Mary Hennessy, her poem . . .

Repeat After Me:

jettison the idea of shelter.
Say it’s like a camera,
one more thing to hold between

ourselves and the world.
In hand, an invitation by library card
to leave the room of a little life.

Move out unwashed and unredeemed.
Wear a raggedy-assed back pack
like a harness.

The smell of pressed meat
from the back of the bus,
The curve at the top of the world

visible. Something you could Braille-
the almost arc of it.
You tell me that the composer Ravel repeats

every line, I say, “so do the birds.”
Sometimes they go on repeating
until I lose count.

Without looking up you say, “the world
will be gone a long time before anyone notices.”
The world will be gone a long time.

“Repeat After Me” © Mary Hennessy, first appeared in Pinesong 2018, annual anthology of the North Carolina Poetry Society

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[original artwork by Linda French Griffin (c) 2021]

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We Do Favor

Posted in Christian themes, Imagery, Photography, poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on January 8, 2021| 6 Comments »

[with three poems by Wendell Berry]

Y’all sure do favor!

So folks say when they first see my father and me together. He’s 94. I can’t say I see it but others do so there you are.

On the bookshelf in his living room is a small framed photo of my father about age 3, the same age as our grandson Bert right now. Now those two do favor! Two peas in a pod, cut from the same cloth, much of a muchness. Look at them with that one smile between them, look at those eyes, little imps, look at the domes of those foreheads. Let me just scroll through all these photos Bert’s parents have texted us and you’ll surely see how Wilson and Bert favor.

But where are the photos of my father at 3 making a face, lining up his lead soldiers, stacking his rough-cut handmade blocks? Where dancing? I suspect that framed studio portrait was a Christmas present from Grandmother’s brother Sidney – the rest of the family was surviving the depression on grits and squirrel gravy, the occasional bartered hog shoulder, never two nickels to rub together. The rare snapshots we have of aunts and cousins are from Uncle Sidney’s camera, the only one in the family.

Another depression is upon us now. We are all doing without something. Photos abound but Bert is not free to stand beside his great-grandfather, to show us their one smile between them. When will the day return that may show us how much we all do favor?

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The poetry of Wendell Berry returns me to the center: the center of the fields and woods he walks; the center of time that stretches from long before me to long after; the center of meaning in a universe in which I am not the center but which nevertheless makes a place for me.

These three poems are from Mr. Berry’s book Sabbaths, published in 1987. A moment of stillness, of contemplation, of connection to the earth and all that fills it makes any place sacred and any day Sabbath. My dread, my grief, my struggle during these times are no different really from any times. These things don’t recede, they don’t disappear. They simply take their place in this moment: no before, no after, only now, and I and you and all of us connected in the journey to discover within them some promise of peace.

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VIII (1979)

I go from the woods into the cleared field:
A place no human made, a place unmade
by human greed, and to be made again.
Where centuries of leaves once built by dying
A deathless potency of light and stone
And mold of all that grew and fell, the timeless
Fell into time. The earth fled with the rain,
The growth of fifty thousand years undone
In a few careless seasons, stripped to rock
And clay – a “new land,” truly, that no race
Was ever native to, but hungry mice
And sparrows and the circling hawks, dry thorns
And thistles sent by generosity
Of new beginning. No Eden, this was
A garden once, a good and perfect gift;
Its possible abundance stood in it
As it then stood. But now what it might be
Must be foreseen, darkly, through many lives –
Thousands of years to make it what it was,
Beginning now, in our few troubled days.

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X (1982)

The dark around us, come,
Let us meet here together,
Members one of another,
Here in our holy room,

Here on our little floor,
Here in the daylit sky,
Rejoicing mind and eye,
Rejoining known and knower,

Light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,
Such order as we know,
One household, high and low,
And all the earth shall sing.

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III (1982)

The pasture, bleached and cold two weeks ago,
Begins to grow in the spring light and rain;
The new grass trembles under the wind’s flow.
The flock, barn-weary, comes to it again,
New to the lambs, a place their mothers know,
Welcoming, bright, and savory in its green,
So fully does the time recover it.
Nibbles of pleasure go all over it.

all selections from Sabbaths, Wendell Berry, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1987
Thank you, Anne Gulley, who gave Linda and me this book many years ago.

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Poetry of Conservation – Epilogue

Posted in Imagery, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2012| 8 Comments »

“It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth . . . there is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth.”

Wendell Berry

Attention precedes intention.

I know someone (actually, I live with her) who keeps a paper cup and square of cardboard under the downstairs sink.  If a wasp wanders into the house she claps the cup over her, slides the cardboard under her, and sets her free out the front door.  I’m thankful to Linda for this because I am slightly hymenopteraphobic.  I’m also thankful to her for all the crickets, centipedes, “Palmetto bugs,” and occasional skinks that have ridden that cup to freedom.  I can’t exactly express why, but it’s a blessing to be married to someone who doesn’t squash things.

Does Creation rejoice when one wasp is saved?  Maybe not, but you never know – the web of life is complex and chaotic and includes every living organism, not least the trillion bacteria that cohabit my body.  I couldn’t live without them.  Each creature occupies its essential place.

I do know this – Creation rejoices in every moment we take to pay attention.  Attention leads to intention.  Once we notice the life all around us . . . once we notice how all life interacts and how we affect it . . . we become poised to care. And to behave as if we care.

The very concept of interdependence within the natural world is only about as old as the church I belong to, Community of Christ.  That there is an intimate relationship between creatures and their environment was first developed by Charles Darwin, who is considered the Father not only of my other favorite “E” word but also of Ecology.  The first published instance of the word “ecology” was not until 1879.  One hundred and thirty-three years – not a great deal of time for the Western psyche to incorporate a radically new relationship with Creation: not dominion over all, not even stewardship of all, but coexistence with all.  Perhaps it’s not surprising that there are many people who imagine we can somehow live without Cape Fear shiners, Yellow lampmussels, or Schweinitz’s sunflowers, much less wasps, crickets, and skinks.

I expect a visit to the NC Zoo would start a lot of those people on a journey down a path at whose end they would have fallen in love, not only with a baby giraffe, but with a minnow endemic to just five counties in central North Carolina.  At least that visit would get their attention.  That’s the first responsibility of a naturalist, paying attention.  It’s the first responsibility of being human.

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Two Sundays ago I left the house at 6:30 a.m. to head for a week at the Zoo.  The car was crammed with nature books, poetry books, enough clothes to change two or three times a day anticipating some sweaty 100+ degree weather.  I had enough handouts and resources to lead workshops and present readings.  Enough food for two weeks, probably.  Enough coffee for a month.

I stopped at Bojangles and bought two sausage biscuits because they were on special.  As I headed south on I-77 I ate one, and then I thought – what did it take to make this?  How many thousands of gallons of water to grow the grain to raise the hog?  How much CO2 from tractor exhaust, how much methane from hog lagoon exhaust?   You’ve probably read how the United States creates over 16% of global greenhouse gases with only 5% of the population.  You may have read how raising meat impacts the environment much, much more than raising grain or vegetables, and how in the developing world, especially China, they are shifting their diets to include more meat as standards of living rise.  Well, when I arrived in Asheboro I handed that second biscuit to a friend and decided to give up eating meat.

Will my decision have any greater benefit to Creation than a few more wasps free in the azalea?  Maybe not, but it’s just my intention, growing out of my attention.

No matter how you lift your eyes you can’t actually see beyond the horizon. You can’t be sure of the outcomes of all your actions, but you can pay attention.  Pay attention to the things you experience every day.  To the things you do. Pay attention to what makes you feel within your heart the love your Creator has placed there.

Continue to discover your own place in Creation.Raven crop 02

RAVEN

Listen.
I’m not going to say this twice.
The sum and product of words
is no mark of intelligence.
Case in point – cousin Crow,
not half as smart as all his talk.

So listen,
I know three things:
Sky, that small kiss of warm air
that rises through my primaries;

the Water on its breath, ridgeblown mist
that bathes us all and makes springs
overflow into Inadu Creek;

and Earth, slope and cup of cove,
the steep that gathers with wide black wings
to draw down Sky,
draw Water up,
that sets free all things green
into a world first fledged.

But listen.
I know from twenty circles
of snowdeep and hungry moons
and twenty circles of fresh shoots
that Sky . . . Water . . . Earth . . .
none of them are mine.

And I know none are yours.

from Snake Den Ridge, a bestiary © Bill Griffin and Linda French Griffin, March Street Press, 2008

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“The universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything.”

Thomas Berry,  1914-2009

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