Sheer Poetry

I'm a little late to the Wendell Berry party, but now that I have discovered him, I am a convert.

Not being a huge poetry fan (flashbacks of high school College Prep level English classes, where poetry was dissected in painful detail so that all possible enjoyment was lost), I wasn't sure if I would like him or not.  Well, I'm sure I would like him as a person; I just wasn't sure I'd enjoy the means of his literary talent.

Oh, I was so wrong.  Take this as an example:

As I started home after dark,
I looked into the sky and saw the new moon, 
an old man with a basket under his arm.
He walked among the cedars in the bare woods.
They stood like guardians, dark
as he passed.  He might have been singing,
or he might not.  He might have been sowing 
the spring flowers, or he might not.  But I saw him
with his basket, going along the hilltop.
--Winter Night Poem for Mary

I love it when an author can capture something, in the space of a few words, an image that I have seen with my own eyes.  Often when I drive home at the end of a winter's day of work, the moon dances along the hilltops keeping pace with my car.  It's such a simple image, but one that brings such a pleasure to remember it.

I do love it when I take a chance and find a new person to meet in their books!