What We Need Is Here

Greg woke me up one day reading this poem by Wendell Berry.

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over the fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to
be quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.




After this, ideas for the blank canvas that had been waiting for some months quickly arrived. I covered the canvas with interior latex paint I had left over from painting a wall. A few days later I glued on some fabric bird outlines I made using enlarged stencils from a borrowed beautiful book on hand printing , and then painted the fabric birds with more leftover wall paint.

PS: We have a couple of tiny persimmon trees and hope to plant grapes within the year...

PPS: The night summer left us here, two or so weeks ago, it did so suddenly, as sometimes happens, and was replaced by cirrus clouds in a gray sky, a dusk with the unmistakably autumnal quality of light, and a chilly wind. When I saw a flock of birds in the sky, enraptured as I was (enraptured as I always am this time of year) I called out to Greg to look! at the geese flying south above us. He simply and dryly informed me that they were the same grackles always squawking around and that they were bearing east. But I don't know if grackles are clear in the ancient faith, and I want to know what is.

-Sarah