We gather to enrich the earth of the Kitchen Garden on Sunday, October 19, at 11:30. Join us!
Enriching the Earth
by Wendell Berry
To enrich the earth I have
sowed clover and grass
to grow and die. I have plowed in the seeds
of winter
grains and of various legumes,
their growth to be plowed in to enrich the
earth.
I have stirred into the ground the offal
and the decay of the growth of
past seasons
and so mended the earth and made its yield increase.
All this
serves the dark. I am slowly falling
into the fund of things. And yet to serve
the earth,
not knowing what I serve, gives a wideness
and a delight to the air,
and my days
do not wholly pass. It is the mind's service,
for when the will
fails so do the hands
and one lives at the expense of life.
After death,
willing or not, the body serves,
entering the earth. And so what was
heaviest
and most mute is at last raised up into song.
Critics and
scholars have acknowledged Wendell Berry as a master of many literary genres,
but whether he is writing poetry, fiction, or essays, his message is
essentially the same: humans must learn to live in harmony with the natural
rhythms of the earth or perish. MORE
