The spring woods hastening now

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The spring woods hastening now

To overshadow him,

He's passing in to where

He can't see out.  It charms

Mere eyesight to believe

The nearest thing not trees

Is the sky, into which 

The trees reach, opening

Their luminous new leaves.

Burdened only by 

A weightless shawl of shade

The lighted leaves let fall,

He seems to move within

A form unpatterned to 

His eye or mind, design

Betokened to his thought

By leafshapes tossed about.

Ways untranslatable

To human tongue or hand

Seem tangled here, and yet

Are brought to light, are brought

To life, and thought finds rest

Beneath a brightened tree

In which, unseen, a warbler

Feeds and sins.  His song's

Small shapely melody

Comes down irregularly,

As all light's givings come.

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~ Wendell Berry
photo by Kathleen Connally

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