In Amsterdam

I've spent several weeks reading and baking. Doing other things too, but mostly a lot of reading and baking. One of my most favorite things has been stealing my mom's library card and finding anything I can to eat up. I've read a lot of novels and memoirs and magazines and short stories and new york times opinion articles. But one thing I've really loved stealing (borrowing) is piles of collections of poems. I've always loved poetry, but more so lately. Sweetness. I love the way a person's words so much encompass the things you feel. I write poems sometimes, and I feel they don't even do my own feelings and thoughts the justice that other's seem to. A few pieces below from the most recent one, a collection from the brilliant Wendell Berry. Thank you, poets, for putting words to my soul.

GRACE

By Wendell Berry
(for Gurney Norman, quoting him)

The woods is shining this morning.
Red, gold and green, the leaves
lie on the ground, or fall,
or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
the place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
all that it is, and how flawless
its grace is. Running or walking, the way
is the same. Be still. Be still.
“He moves your bones, and the way is clear.”

EXCEPT

By Wendell Berry

Now that you have gone
and I am alone and quiet,
my contentment would be
complete, if I did not wish
you were here so I could say,
"How good it is, Tanya,
to be alone and quiet."

THE BROKEN GROUND

By Wendell Berry

The opening out and out,
body yielding body:
the breaking
through which the new
comes, perching
above its shadow
on the piling up
darkened broken old
husks of itself:
bud opening to flower
opening to fruit opening
to the sweet marrow
of the seed--
taken
from what was, from
what could have been.
What is left
is what is.