Sabbaths 1998, VII
(For John Haines)

There is a place you can go where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light on the water.
Trees are there, leaves, and the light on leaves moved by air.
Birds, singing, move among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come to no thought of these,
but they are themselves your thoughts.
There seems to be little to say, less and less.
Here they are.
Here you are.
Here as though gone.
None of us stays,
but in the hush where each leaf in the speech of leaves is a sufficient syllable
the passing light finds out surpassing freedom of its way.

– Wendell Berry
from Gratefulness’s Poetry Page