Conversations

The thing about repeating a poem over and over, is that the lines get a life of their own. They start talking back to you, and make echoes in you mind like reflected trees and leaves by the river’s edge.

It can happen when you least expect it. Or when you need them most.

This morning I woke with an ache. The thing itself is small, but with roots deep into the underworld of my being. In this, the small is really no more than old fear repeated. A (relatively) little thing that reminds me of a bigger thing, and therefore carries meaning outside of itself. Like a mouse with the cloak of a Raptor.

“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.”

I woke with an ache. And a song. Lines from Wendell Berry’s “I Go Among Trees and Sit Still” had started talking to me.

I cannot let this poem go. I know it has the power to save me.