September 2016 Archives

equinox 2016

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This morning I was looking for balance, thinking about what we have achieved this season rather than the to do lists that loom. I walked this evening noticing leaves on the grass, seed heads in the field, and the bark of the sycamore. I worked in the studio on pots, gathering my accidents and claiming them as purposeful. I picked a moon-flower for the table and some basil for dinner. I watched the sunset, recognizing the poise in the September light.

equinox 2016.jpg
"Sycamore" by Wendell Berry
 
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 fate.
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.