What we need is here
Added 2020-09-25 20:07:24 +0000 UTC
[photo by Steve Hillebrand]
For reasons I’m not certain of, today during my meditation I turned to a line that was echoing in my head, from a Wendell Berry poem the name of which I couldn’t recall. When I found it, it made sense that something was tugging me toward it. I’ll probably come back to it again around Samhain—after all it is in part explicitly about death—but it’s for all this season, for now.
The 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 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.
And then I heard a cricket singing, softly, in the roots of the honeysuckle.
