Sabbaths

Kurt Jackson, "Fungi Hunter"

Sabbaths 1999

Again I resume the long

lesson: how small a thing

can be pleasing, how little

in this hard world it takes

to satisfy the mind

and bring it to its rest.

With the ongoing havoc

the woods this morning is

almost unnaturally still.

Through stalled air, unshadowed

light, a few leaves fall

of their own weight.

The sky

is gray. It begins in mist

almost at the ground

and rises forever. The trees

rise in silence almost

natural, but not quite,

almost eternal, but

not quite.

What more did I

think I wanted? Here is

what has always been.

Here is what will always

be. Even in me,

the Maker of all this

returns in rest, even

to the slightest of His works,

a yellow leaf slowly

falling, and is pleased.

Wendell Berry 

Wendell Berry writes on this theme so well, so 'satisfyingly', in my opinion. "How small a thing", "how little in this hard world" - can fill us and lift us and be enough. How the trees and mist rise in a stillness that is almost eternal. The landscape is itself just a place and a moment, but it evokes so much more. I mean, here's a man on a walk in the woods, and it's good, it's - that old word we don't use much anymore -  meet. It recalls him to that moment after God created the world, when He looked at it all, and said, "It's good", and then he rested. Wendell seems to have that sense within himself of God resting. What a cheering thought. That God would find pleasure in a man walking in the woods, and in a single falling leaf, well, it says a lot about him.