Grief by Pattiann Rogers

Even though, like a stone sinking
in a green sea, it knows depth
and the darkness of depth; even though,
like a thundercloud in wind, it is torn
apart and reassembled over and over;
even though it draws in, pulls
its ragged edges close around
the heart, like a blossom of bindweed
at dusk; and even though its form
is as vague and sharp as a shadow
of smoke against a winter hillside;
still it maintains a hard, viable
seed of calm at its center, possesses
the seeking tendency of tendrils

and roots, recalls its lasting kinship
with the past and future wounds
of the living, holds to the heritage
of that certainty, gives itself finally
over to all those powers that rise
by themselves - water oak and willow
saplings, leafy-stems of field
thistles, sunflowered and weed-thick
fallows, gatherings of dragonflies,
flockings of warblers, fog in sunlight,
pond turtle and pole star surfacing,
coyote cry of proclamation up
to the moon, and the dominion
of birth, and the kingdom of promise.

Wendell Berry | Alison Deming | William Kittredge
Richard Nelson | David W. Orr | Chet Raymo | Pattiann Rogers
Scott Russell Sanders

and More...