I don’t really do poetry. As in, I’ve attempted it but I don’t write it often or very well. As in, my most frequent reaction to reading it is to let out a slow sigh, roll my eyes and turn my attention to something else, usually in the middle of a stanza.

Of course, there are exceptions, those being the works of e.e. cummings and Sharon Olds and, of course, Wendell Berry. I’ve posted one of my favorite Berry poems before and now, here is (part of) another one. I heard it read by Garrison Keillor last night in the car as I was driving home and it resonated with me for reasons both obvious and not. And while it is lovely to read and re-read, it is also a treat to hear it read by round-voiced Keillor. Go here and listen to it with your eyes closed. That’s how I listened to it while I was driving, though I wouldn’t recommend that dangerous stunt.

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Part VII of 1994- by Wendell Berry

I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.