When I am among the trees,especially the willows and the honey locust,equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,they give off such hints of gladness.I would almost say that they save me, and daily.I am so distant from the hope of myself,in which I have goodness, and discernment,and never hurry through the worldbut walk slowly, and bow often.Around me the trees stir in their leavesand call out, “Stay awhile.”The light flows from their branches.And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,“and you too have comeinto the world to do this, to go easy, to be filledwith light, and to shine.”
Thursday, September 17, 2026
"When I Am Among the Trees" by Mary Oliver
Saturday, July 11, 2026
"The Swimmer's Moment" by Margaret Avison
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| Margaret Avison, 1918 - 2007 |
For everyone
The swimmer's moment at the whirlpool comes,
But many at that moment will not say
"This is the whirlpool, then."
By their refusal they are saved
From the black pit, and also from contesting
The deadly rapids, and emerging in
The mysterious, and more ample, further waters.
And so their bland-blank faces turn and turn
Pale and forever on the rim of suction
They will not recognize.
Of those who dare the knowledge
Many are whirled into the ominous centre
That, gaping vertical, seals up
For them an eternal boon of privacy,
So that we turn away from their defeat
With a despair, not for their deaths, but for
Ourselves, who cannot penetrate their secret
Nor even guess at the anonymous breadth
Where one or two have won:
(The silver reaches of the estuary).
Monday, June 1, 2026
"Sabbath Poem: 2008, XII”, by Wendell Berry
| 2014 |
My people are destroyed
for lack of knowledge…
Hosea 4:6
We forget the land we stand on
and live from. We set ourselves
free in an economy founded
on nothing, on greed verified
by fantasy, on which we entirely
depend. We depend on fire
that consumes the world without
lighting it. To this dark blaze
driving the inert metal
of our most high desire
we offer our land as fuel,
thus offering ourselves at last
to be burned. This is our riddle
to which the answer is a life
that none of us has lived.
—Wendell Berry
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
“Before The Beginning Of Years" by Algernon Charles Swinburne
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| Algernon Charles Swinburne |
Before the beginning of years
There came to the making of man
Time, with a gift of tears;
Grief, with a glass that ran;
Pleasure, with pain for leaven;
Summer, with flowers that fell;
Remembrance, fallen from heaven,
And madness risen from hell;
Strength without hands to smite;
Love that endures for a breath;
Night, the shadow of light,
And life, the shadow of death.
And the high gods took in hand
Fire, and the falling of tears,
And a measure of sliding sand
From under the feet of the years;
And froth and the drift of the sea;
And dust of the laboring earth;
And bodies of things to be
In the houses of death and of birth;
And wrought with weeping and laughter,
And fashioned with loathing and love,
With life before and after
And death beneath and above,
For a day and a night and a morrow,
That his strength might endure for a span
With travail and heavy sorrow,
The holy spirit of man.
From the winds of the north and the south,
They gathered as unto strife;
They breathed upon his mouth,
They filled his body with life;
Eyesight and speech they wrought
For the veils of the soul therein,
A time for labor and thought,
A time to serve and to sin;
They gave him light in his ways,
And love, and space for delight,
And beauty, and length of days,
And night, and sleep in the night.
His speech is a burning fire;
With his lips he travaileth;
In his heart is a blind desire,
In his eyes foreknowledge of death;
He weaves, and is clothed with derision;
Sows, and he shall not reap;
His life is a watch or a vision
Between a sleep and a sleep.”
―Algernon Charles Swinburne
Friday, April 10, 2026
Not dead yet
I’m not dead yet
said the mouse to the cat
(March 2026)
-o-
The glory of a single bee
Buzzing by so merrily,
Enhances garden, flower, house
Charms the silly garden mouse
(Around 1970)
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
"Dog" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
| Dog on balcony, 11 October 2020 |


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