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Sunday, August 6, 2017

They Grow No Older

Yesterday was the birth day of an author and poet I have admired for years. This is one of his poems:

The Real Work

"It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,

and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings."

.......and another:


Woods

"I part the out thrusting branches
and come in beneath
the blessed and the blessing trees.

Though I am silent
there is singing around me.

Though I am dark
there is vision around me.

Though I am heavy
there is flight around me."

Wendell Berry's birthday was yesterday. He was 83. The title for this blog post is from another of his poems entitled The Meeting.

It was while I was posting yesterday about Pete, now 86, and also thinking about Mr. Berry, that I realized I thought of both men as they were when I first met them some forty plus years ago. (In Pete's case in person, in Wendell's case via his writings.)  I have aged, but because I had no reason to think of them in terms of passing years, they were still, to me, in their 30's-40's.
It's the same when I see people I have not been around for years, I think of their children as being little, even though they may be the same ages as my children, it seems they grow no older. Does it work that way for you?

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