on the hill late at night

The ripe grassheads bend in the starlight

in the soft wind, beneath them the darkness

of the grass, fathomless, the long blades

rising out of the well of time.  Cars

travel the valley roads below me, their lights

finding the dark, and racing on.  Above

their roar is a silence I have suddenly heard,

and felt the country turn under the stars

toward dawn.  I am wholly willing to be here

between the bright silent thousands of stars

and the life of the grass pouring out of the ground.

The hill has grown to me like a foot.

Until I lift the earth I cannot move.

~ Wendell Berry

from Farming Poems

photo from kathleen connally