The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry
This has been a day of many poems to live even though I feel I have done almost nothing except sit and stare. Well, maybe not exactly nothing because:
1. I did talk to my sister-in-law in Britain. Something I do every week and we remembered my late husband and Tommy Makem, whom my sister-in-law had met once long ago.
2. I did sort out travel arrangements with a friend to go to a celebration of life out of the city tomorrow.
3. I am writing my second post of the day as I live a poem or several poems today.
4. I did do the two crossword puzzles in the paper this morning. Not exactly work but better than FB.
5. I did add about 20 folk songs to my phone for my next walk. Adding songs always takes me at least two hours. But I did learn how to do an airdrop to my phone. All is not lost.
Maybe it wasn’t a completely wasted day. Maybe it was my version of disappearing; except it wasn’t into nature. It was into the overlooked cracks in the couch where small crumbs rustle and spawn, because I didn’t manage to haul out the vacuum cleaner this week. Well, I needed peace.
Great heron and wood drake aren’t as near at hand as dust bunnies and fungus gnats, but I have made peace with them over the years, as I have with the crumbs and the indelible sofa spots.
Maybe my peace with wild things is only when I walk. When I’m at home I make my peace with wanton things, the restless crumbs and the mop-blind dust.