After Wendell Berry
So much of life depends on the quiet
of the early hours—the spirit, tired
from all that spending, laying to rest
beneath the dreaming trees. Farewell,
night market. Here is the body,
no longer parched with thirst, rising
like a green finger. God, thinking
to make this world, must have woken
at dawn, the ground still wet
with belief. And I say this having
stirred awake in His dark, loving arms,
on that log beneath the slow,
falling dew, the Word strong in me.
What was my breath but silk
in that silence that failed to break—
time, winged and wonderous,
slinking into the ether like a shadow?
And now, when living seems
impossible, the world—a tower
of books, one page from destruction,
I walk into that soft stillness of time
where anything, imagined, could be.
I dream a song of beauty and life,
my small voice, purposed to prayer,
and begin the alchemy of my life anew.