POET OF THE RIVER LANDS

Written by Wendell Berry in 2003 from his collection This Day Collected and New Sabbath Poems page.

Berry paints wonderful word pictures in some of his work. Since he often uses blank verse I believe he uses the format to force the reader to pay attention to the punctuation. It really does make a difference.

This is a poet of the river lands,

a lowdown man of the deepest

depth of the valley, where gravity gathers

the waters, the poisons, the trash,

where light comes late and leaves early.

From the window of his small room

the lowdown poet looks out, He watches 

the river for ripples, flashes, signs

of beings rising in the under surface dark,

or lightly swimming upon the flow,

or, for a minnow, descending the deeps

of the air to enter and shatter

forever their momentary reflections,

for the river is a place passing

through a passing place.

The poet, his window, and his poems

are creatures of the shore that the river

gnaws, dissolves, and carries away.

He is  tree of a sort, rooted

in the dark, aspiring to the light,

dependent on both. His poems

are leavings, sheddings, gathered

from the light, as it has come,

and offered to the dark, which he believes

msut shine with sight,

with light, dark only to him.