Finally will it not be enough, after much living, after much love, after much dying of those you have loved, to sit on the porch near sundown with your eyes simply open, watching the wind shape the clouds into the shapes of clouds? Even then you will remember this history of love, shaped in the shapes of flesh, everchanging as the clouds that pass, the blessed yearning of body for body, unending light. You will remember, watching the clouds, the future of love. – 1994, II (p. 177) (This Sunday series is inspired by Wendell Berry’s A Timbered Choir.) Continue reading A Timbered Choir | Fourth Sunday.

Slowly, slowly, they return To the small woodland let alone: Great trees, outspreading and upright, Apostles of the living light. Patient as stars, they build in air Tier after tier a timbered choir, Stout beams upholding weightless grace Of song, a blessing on their place. They stand in waiting all around, Uprisings of their native ground, Downcomings of the distant light; They are the advent they await. Receiving sun and giving shade, Their life’s a benefaction made, And is a benediction said Over the living and the dead. In fall their brightened leaves, released, Fly down the wind, and we … Continue reading A Timbered Choir | Second Sunday.

A Timbered Choir is one of the two books of poetry I purchased while reading the last chapter of Barbara Brown Taylor’s wonderful An Altar in the World. It’s subtitled “The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997”. Most Sundays, my poetry is more likely to come from the Psalms, and I liked the idea of reading something contemporary. Even better if it’s focused on the outdoors and the peace and tranquility a quiet walk in the woods might provide. In his preface, Berry writes “These poems were written in silence, in solitude, mainly out of doors. A reader will like them best, I … Continue reading A Timbered Choir | First Sunday.

from this morning’s walk What Gorgeous Thing I do not know what gorgeous thing the bluebird keeps saying, his voice easing out of his throat, beak, body into the pink air of the early morning. I like it whatever it … Continue reading Poetry Sunday | What Gorgeous Thing.