Tuesday, October 14, 2014

enriching the earth

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.

"Enriching the Earth" by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems. © North Point Press, 1985. Reprinted with the permission of the author. 


 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