Time to pause among the trees

time-to-pause-among-the-trees

This week has been a little surreal. Unplanned endings and unprepared new beginnings colliding in a time that felt disorientated. Or discombobulated, as I heard someone say.

I’ve also missed my usual routine of a pause among the trees during the morning alpaca round. This is because Steve and I have been synchronising our arrival with the three amigos. We’ve been preparing them for their great big adventure, which starts today as they leave the valley for a new home.

So I need a pause, preferably among trees, and came across this poem from the farmer-poet Wendell Berry.

Maybe you need it too.

I GO AMONG TREES

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

+ Wendell Berry, from ‘This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems’, Counterpoint Press, 2014

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This Week

Something of my journeyings