Thrush song, stream song, holy love

Thrush song, stream song, holy love

That flows through earthly forms and fold,

The song of Heaven’s Sabbath fleshed

In throat and ear, in stream and stone,

A grace living here as we live,

Move my mind now to that which holds

Things as they change.

                                    The warmth has come.

The doors have opened.  Flower and song

Embroider ground and air, lead me

Beside the healing field that waits;

Growth, death, and a restoring form

Of human use will make it well.

But I go on, beyond, higher

In the hill’s fold, forget the time

I come from and go to, recall

This grove left out of all account,

A place enclosed in song.

                                                Design

Now falls from thought.  I go amazed

Into the maze of a design

That mind can follow but not know,

Apparent, plain, and yet unknown,

The outline lost in earth and sky.

What form wakens and rumples this?

Be still.  A man who seems to be

A gardener rises out of the ground,

Stands like a tree, shakes off the dark,

The bluebells opening at his feet,

The light one figured cloth of song.

                Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, 1982 (IV)