love is always too much

 

 

.

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.

In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening 
we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,

and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,
except we keep returning 
to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth 
of its joy. 

—Wendell Berry

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living water

  

 

.

 

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.

In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening 
we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,

and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,
except we keep returning 
to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth 
of its joy. 

—Wendell Berry

.

sit and be still

 

.

Sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry wind's

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing

water among the rocks,

a stream unheard before,

and you are where

breathing is prayer.

—Wendell Berry

. 

 

the law that marries things

 

.

 

1.

The cloud is free only

to go with the wind.

The rain is free

only in falling.

The water is free only

in its gathering together,

in its downward courses,

in its rising into the air.

2.

In law is rest

if you love the law,

if you enter, singing, into it

as water in its descent.

3.

Or song is truest law,

and you must enter singing;

it has no other entrance.

It is the great chorus

of parts. The only outlawry

is in division.

4.

Whatever is singing

is found, awaiting the return

of whatever is lost.

5.

Meet us in the air

over the water,

sing the swallows.

Meet me, meet me,

the redbird sings,

here here here here.

—Wendell Berry

 

 

.

 

 

leaving

 

.

How much delight I've known
in navigating down the flow
by stepping stones, by sounding 
stones, by words that are
stepping and sounding stones.

Going down stone by stone,
the song of the water changes,
changing the way I walk
which change my thought
as I go. Stone to stone
the stream flows. Stone to stone
the walker goes. The words
stand stone still until
the flow moves them, changing
the sound - a new word -
a new place to step or stand.


—Wendell Berry

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the peace of wild things

 

.

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children's  lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

—Wendell Berry

.

water

 

.

I was born in a drought year. That summer

my mother waited in the house, enclosed

in the sun and the dry ceaseless wind,

for the men to come back in the evenings,

bringing water from a distant spring.

Veins of leaves ran dry, roots shrank.

And all my life I have dreaded the return
of that year, sure that it still is
somewhere, like a dead enemy's soul. 

Fear of dust in my mouth is always with me,
and I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the water of cisterns.

I am a dry man whose thirst is praise
of clouds, and whose mind is something of a cup.
My sweetness is to wake in the night
after days of dry heat, hearing the rain. 

—Wendell Berry

.

love is always too much

 

  

.

Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.

We did not make it.

Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.

In its abundance
it survives our thirst.

In the evening 
we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,

and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.

It does not hold us,
except we keep returning 
to its rich waters

thirsty.

We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth 
of its joy. 

—Wendell Berry

.

a place of water

 

. 

There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light

on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.

Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come

to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be

little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.

None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable

the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.


—Wendell Berry
Sabbaths, VII, excerpt

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