Five Pearls from Wendell Berry

Some poems are long, filling up a page, or an entire afternoon. But other poems are wonderfully short, like little gems, lustrous beauty wrapped around a single grain of sand.

Here are five such pearls from Wendell Berry, found among his “Sabbath Poems.”

1997, VII

There is a day
when the road neither
comes nor goes, and the way
is not a way but a place.

*

1997, I

Best of any song
is bird song
in the quiet, but first
you must have the quiet.

*

1996, VI

A bird the size
of a leaf fills
the whole lucid
evening with
his note, and flies.

*

1994, VIII

And now this leaf lies brightly on the ground.

*

1991, V

The seed is in the ground.
Now we may rest in hope
While darkness does its work.

+ Wendell Berry