Day 311 of Year 2 (Actually Day 316)
I've been spending a lot of time in the garden this week. It is renewing, new life budding everywhere. I'm particularly taken with the weeds. Unwanted and untended but unstoppable, they will have their say. Their vigor for life in the worst circumstances is admirable and inspiring. This print has nothing to do with weeds or gardens but there is something in both that is deeply hopeful and sustaining like a sunrise. My love to all those who are sick or suffering.
A Purification
By 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.
From New Collected Poems https://amzn.to/2XqlI44