Woods

 

 

 

Gina Signore

Woods

 

I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.
Though I am silent
there is singing around me.
Though I am dark
there is vision around me.
Though I am heavy
there is flight around me. 

 

Wendell Berry 

Silence, darkness, heaviness.

Singing, vision, flight. 

There is an exchange here that is extraordinary.

 

How much does nature influence our being?

The movement and sound and light - these change us.

I don't know how, but they do.

The Real Work

Jan Schmuckal

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

So not knowing what to do or where to go may be a good thing. “Not knowing” – is that the point Berry is trying to make? Thinking we know, when we don’t? 

Work Song Part 2 A Vision (Epilogue)

Maxfield Parrish

Work Song Part 2 - A Vision (Epilogue)

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it…
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
there, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides…

The river will run
clear, as we will never know it…
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.

The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields…
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling
light. This is no paradisal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.

Wendell Berry
from "New Collected Poems" 

I read this poem for the first time the other day and it seemed like it was meant to flow naturally from the last one ("Grass", by Carl Sandburg). Continuing the slow organic reclaiming of the landscape up from the grass and into the tree-trunks and branches. That image of ourselves as rich soil and old forest for generations in the future is so reinforcing. If we can just survive our wars, our ignorance, our tragedies ( I mean this is the personal sense as well, our individual downfall and undoing) and "stand like slow growing trees", just stand, our lives will feed those around us, and those to come, layer upon layer, like the leaves feed the roots of the forest. It's an incredible image, that of the rivers running clear, new memories becoming old stories and songs, the ruined landscape recovering its health and becoming, as Dylan Thomas says ("Poem in October") "a green chapel" full of parables and mysteries and abundance. That is something to hold on to, that. That is something to help one to stand. Not without struggle, but with hope nonetheless.

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.

 

The Sycamore

Andrew Wyeth

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

Wendell Berry

Self-portrait by means of a tree. How many times this has been done, and yet it never tires. I love this poem. All of Berry's love for the land comes out in it. And there are so many layers. "Whose earth I am shaped in" - like Adam, made of the earth and responsible for it.  "There is no year it has flourished in that has not harmed it." What a line that is! And these too, "It bears the gnarls of its history healed over." "It has gathered all accidents into its purpose." Now that is hope. That is sheer wonder. That is how God works. I would be ruled by that principle too.