The long lesson

Today I went on a little hike with folks from church up to a view-point high and distant over the city I live in. On the way back we got icecreams from the old general store in the small nearby village, and ate them under the bridge by the river. It was a nice day out. On my way down to the hike I was listening to a talk by Malcome Guite on Wendell Berry called ‘Practicing Resurrection’. It made some interesting points, mostly drawing from Wendell Berry’s poems, and during the course of the talk he read a poem I didn’t know (I’ve discovered it’s subsequent to the collected volume I have). The sky today was not grey and misty, but a brilliant blue in an uncharacteristically hot autumn. Still, it suited, so here it is:

Again I resume the long lesson: how small a thing can be pleasing, how little in this hard world it takes to satisfy the mind and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc the woods this morning is almost unnaturally still. Through stalled air, unshadowed light, a few leaves fall of their own weight.

The sky is gray. It begins in mist almost at the ground and rises forever. The trees rise in silence almost natural, but not quite, almost eternal, but not quite.

What more did I think I wanted? Here is what has always been. Here is what will always be. Even in me, the Maker of all this returns in rest, even to the slightest of His works, a yellow leaf slowly falling, and is pleased.

"VII" by Wendell Berry from This Day. © Counterpoint Press, 2013.