As the Wind Wheel Turns

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No gardening today, but I will water my new maple trees when I get home from work at my shop. It is not raining enough to do any good…besides we only get 19 inches of rain here a year.
Red tail hawk visited yesterday, hovering over the edge of the bluff in the updrafts…I think to myself “run little mousies and ratties…this one I have seen come up out of the shrubbery with one of your relatives in its talons many times.”
The wild Nootka roses in the field next to my house are loaded with red rose hips…I will let them get a little riper and then bring some in for bouquets until they dry , then they will become tea.
I am selling lots of mochas and coffee and hot chocolate today…blustery enough for that…have sold some ice cream as well…now that amazes me. BRRRRR….
I have my quickbooks pretty well caught up for this week and sent out some bills…
Now I get to wait for customers and relax a bit and think of how amazing my life is each day…Knowing the place inside myself that I came from only a few months back I know I am alive again at last and this poem speaks to that…
It is called from “Given” by Wendell Berry

Sabbaths 1998, VI

By expenditure of hope,
Intelligence, and work,
You think you have it fixed.
It is unfixed by rule.
Within the darkness, all
Is being changed, and you
Also will be changed.

Now I recall to mind
A costly year: Jane Kenyon,
Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard,
All in the same spring dead,
So much companionship
Gone as the river goes.

And my good workhorse Nick
Dead, who called out to me
In his conclusive pain
To ask my help. I had
No help to give. And flood
Covered the cropland twice.
By summer’s end there are
No more perfect leaves.

But won’t you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

The gift is balanced by
Its total loss, and yet,
And yet the light breaks in,
Heaven seizing its moments
That are at once its own
And yours. The day ends
And is unending where
The summer tanager,
Warbler, and vireo
Sing as they move among
Illuminated leaves.

~ Wendell Berry ~

(Given)

• 25 Sep, 2008
• 2 likes

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