the silence

.

.

How many of your birthdays

I have by now been

glad of!  And all that time

I've been trying to tell you

how with you was born

my truest life and most 

desired, the better man

by your birth I am, however

fallen short. I'll never

get it right by half.

Between us, by now, what

is more telling than the silence

in which once more an old 

redbud simply blooms?

.

~ Wendell Berry

photo by Eliot Porter