the book of Camp Branch

.

Camp Branch, my native stream,

forever unreturning flows

from the town down to Cane Run

which flows to the river.  It is 

my native descent, my native

walk, my native thought

that stays and goes, passing

ever downward toward the sea.

Its sound is a song that flings up

the light to the undersides of leaves.

Its song and light are a way

of walking, a way of thought

moved by sound and sight.

It flows as deep in its hollow

as it can go, far down as it has

worn its way. Passing down

over its plunder of rocks, it makes

an irregular music.  Here 

is what I want to know.  Here

is what I am trying to say.

O brave Ross Feld, here is

no "fortification against time."

Here the fort has fallen 

and the water passes its benediction

over the shards, singing!

How much delight I've known

in navigating down the flow

by stepping stones, by sounding

stones, by words too that are

stepping and sounding stones.

Going down stone by stone,

the song of the water changes,

changing the way I walk

which changes my thought

as I go.  Stone to stone

the stream flows.  Stone to stone

the walker goes.  The words

stand stone still until

the flow moves them, changing

the sound - a new word -

a new place to step or stand.

In the notch of Camp Branch

the footing changes, year

to year, sometimes

day to day, as the surges

of the stream move the rocks.

Every walk, as Archie Ammons

said, "is a new walk." And so

go slow.  Let the mind

step with the feet

as the stream steps

downward over the rocks,

nowhere anywhere

but where it is.

In the crease of its making

the steep stream gathers

the seeps that come silently

down from the wooded slants.

Only there at the rockbed

of the branch do the waters break

into light, into singing

of water flowing over rocks

which, in its motion, the water

moves.  And so, singing, the song

changes, moved by music

harsh and crude: splashes,

slubbers, chuckles, and warbles,

the hollow tones of a bell,

a sustained pour, the small

fall steady as a column.

Sometimes, gentled, if you

stand while it flows, it seems

to meditate upon itself

and the hill's long changing

under the sun and rain.

A changing song,

a changing walk,

a changing thought.

A sounding stone,

a stepping stone,

a word

that is a sounding and a stepping

stone.

A language that is a stream flowing

and is a man's thought as he 

walks and thinks beside the stream.

His thoughts will hold

if the words will hold, if each

is a stone that will bear weight,

placed by the flow

in the flow.  The language too

descends through time, subserving

false economy, heedless power,

blown with the gas of salesmanship,

rattled with the sale of needless war,

worn by the mere unhearing

babble of thoughtlessness,

and must return to its own 

downward flow by the flowing

water, the muttered syllables,

the measureless music, the stream

flowing and singing, the man

walking and thinking, balanced

on unsure footholds

in the flowing stream.

"Make sense," I told myself,

the song of the tumbling waters

in my ears.  The sense you make

may make its way along the stream,

but it will not be the stream's sense

you make, nor yet your own

quite, for the flux of language

will make its claim too

upon your walk, upon the stream.

The words fall at last

onto the page, the turning leaf

in the Book of Camp Branch

in time's stream.  As the eye,

as the mind, moves from

moving water to turning page,

what is lost?  What, worse,

is lost if the words falsify

the stream in your walk beside it?

To be carried or to resist

you must be a stone

in the way.  You must be

a stone rolled away.

The song changes by singing

into a different song.

It sings by falling.  The water

descending in its old groove

wears it new.  The words descending

to the page render the possible

into the actual, by wear,

for better or worse, renew

the wearied mind.  This is only

the lowly stream of Camp Branch,

but every stream is lowly.

Only low in the land does 

the water flow.  It goes

to seek the level that is lowest,

the silence that gathers

many songs, the darkness

made of many lights,

and then by the sun is raised

again into the air.

~ Wendell Berry

from Leavings

art by Norma Herring