Author: Wendell Berry

Planting trees early in spring, We make a place for birds to sing In time to come. How do we […]

I part the out thrusting branches And come in beneath The blessed and the blessing trees. Though I am silent […]

When despair grows in me And I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound In fear […]

Geese appear high over us, Pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, As in love or sleep, holds Them to their […]

I. I dream of you walking at night along the streams Of the country of my birth, warm blooms and […]

Though the air is full of singing My head is loud With the labor of words. Though the season is […]

Like the water Of a deep stream, Love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink […]

The year begins with war. Our bombs fall day and night, Hour after hour, by death Abroad appeasing wrath, Folly, […]

In a dream I meet My dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, And yet he is […]

The hill pasture, an open place among the trees, Tilts into the valley. The clovers and tall grasses Are in […]

Amid the gray trunks of ancient trees we found The gay woodland lilies nodding on their stems, Frail and fair, […]

I was born in a drouth year. That summer My mother waited in the house, enclosed In the sun and […]

The ewes crowd to the mangers; Their bellies widen, sag; Their udders tighten. Soon The little voices cry In morning […]

ALL that I serve will die, all my delights, The flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field, The silent […]

1. Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death A […]

Do not think me gentle Because I speak in praise Of gentleness, or elegant Because I honor the grace That […]

The longer we are together The larger death grows around us. How many we know by now Who are dead! […]

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, Vacation with pay. Want more Of everything ready-made. Be afraid To know your […]

You will be walking some night In the comfortable dark of your yard And suddenly a great light will shine […]

I. The poem is important, but Not more than the people Whose survival it serves, One of the necessities, so […]

I He wakes in darkness. All around Are sounds of stones shifting, locks Unlocking. As if some one had lifted […]

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming, Whose hands reach into the ground and sprout To […]

It may be that when we no longer know what to do We have come our real work, And that […]