Wendell Berry Kicks Ass

in-a-Kentucky-farmer/poet-been-married-to-the-same-woman-forever kind of way. All good poetry is about seeing, but his poems are frequently use seeing as an overt theme. To wit;


"I found them here at first without hunting,
by grace, as all beauties are first found."

from"The Lilies"


Or this one, as comforting and concise a picture of heaven as I know.

"In a dream I meet
my dead friend. He has,
I know, gone long and far,
and yet he is the same
for the dead are changeless.
They grow no older.
It is I who have changed,
grown strange to what I was.
Yet I, the changed one,
ask:"How you been?"
He grins and looks at me.
"I been eating peaches
off some mighty fine trees."

"A Meeting"


Not surprisingly another favorite subject is the pleasure of commitment and long lasting love descriptions I, who have never had that, read with longing and more than a little awe.

"The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep going in."


"We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back."

from "The Country of Marriage"


Or my absolute favorite;

"Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only a shade,

and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before."

"The Wild Rose"