The clearing rests in song and shade,
it is a creature made
by old light held in soil and leaf,
by human joy and grief,
by human work,
fidelity of sight and stroke,
by rain, by water on
the parent stone.
We join our work to Heaven’s gift,
our hope to what is left,
that field and woods at last agree
in an economy
of widest worth,
High Heaven’s Kingdom come on earth.
Imagine Paradise.
O dust, arise!
–Wendell Berry, Sabbaths, “VII”, p. 54
