still

I Go Among Trees and Sit Still

by 

Wendell Berry

I go among trees and sit still.

All my stirring becomes quiet 

around me like circles on water.

My tasks lie in their places

 where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes

 and lives a while in my sight.

What it fears in me leaves me,

 and the fear of me leaves it.

It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.

 I live for a while in its sight.

What I fear in it leaves it,

 and the fear of it leaves me.

It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,

 mute in my consternations,

I hear my song at last,

 and I sing it. As we sing,

the day turns, the trees move.

practice resurrection.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

By Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

happy garden.

my garden has been happy lately.

“Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of 

personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. 

A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world.

He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the

grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, 

the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."

-Wendell Berry

The Art of the Common Place: The Agrarian Essays

to the conservationist.

Please don't take your Prius to the drive-thru.

 

 

 

"Why should conservationists have a positive interest in…farming? 
There are lots of reasons, but the plainest is: Conservationists eat. 
To be interested in food but not in food production is clearly absurd. 
Urban conservationists may feel entitled to be unconcerned about food production because they are not farmers. 
But they can’t be let off so easily, for they are all farming by proxy. 
They can eat only if land is farmed on their behalf by somebody somewhere in some fashion. 
If conservationists will attempt to resume responsibility for their need to eat,
 they will be led back fairly directly to all their previous concerns for the welfare of nature. ”

Wendell Berry

Conservationist and Agrarian
picture sources:
12345