Deane’s posterous

Listen here:Play here:[Audio:DeaneTR-Traditions.mp3]

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Heading out after a family together of traditions
A family hearing of the taproot of world suffering

the need for a cure at the center of the world
the psychic center of all life’s center, the holy land.
A desert soon to be gardens for all peoples and all life

Wanting to say hello
reaching
our hands out to each other
reaching our hands together
feeling warmth in each other
no eyes meet
yet that brief greeting amidst heading out
through a crowd of quiet listening
That brief greeting is an antidote
that defies all facts and figures
defies all suffering of even the bloodiest of oppressions
defies all loss and terror, all imprisonments, all starvations

A found solution
Think only of the warmth between those hands
Think of how this warmth, this living sharing… Essential
Think Hands sharing the silent singing of their voices
Hands sending warmth and circulation
Hands as the strongest note of the lowest and hieghest range
These songs are strong
vibrant thriving

Steady roots connected
branch tips swaying closer and further
hands touching, sending, recieving
hands as inner walls fading from need
past barriers of hurt, loss and rage.

Maybe we learn to let go enough someday?

Maybe see the whole forest…
then foreget what your looking at
then remember that you forget
then find yourself
in the bark pattern
of specific space
on a specific treee
amongst so many tree.

This is song for fallen one’s song
now recited by now new Elders…

Hands In time…
rain
centuries of rain
Quiet calm in trees
we are here to soothe
to end the harm and remedy the hurt at the center of the world…
remedy the hurt and center the world…

Poem and Photos by DeaneTR© 2003
As presented at: http://peacefromtrees.org//index.php?title=104-Untitled%205&back=74

Click here to download:

Soundofthesoundofthesound.mp3 (6037 KB)

The sound of the sound of the sound of the word
 
Once read as it echoes
 
The sound of the sound of the truth
 
Once read as it bleeds on earth under soil
 
To a deeper world of vision
 
Of a rhythm of the rhyme of the rhythm
 
Of a tone… once known repeats…
 
 
 
As rhyme of the rhyme of rhythm
 
As presence as wings as eyelids as all limbs
 
As complete whirls as dancing real and in wealth
 
As breath of air of winds of wind as
 
Leaves of larger and larger
 
Ever growing wind? As well as
 
Love that is shaped by wind… as eyes seeing as
 
 
 
As original eyes as moist blinking eyes of rapid moving
 
Of the wind moves around a limb of a wind moves
 
Around a trunk of a wind is a life swaying
 
Century on century on deeper and deeper rooted soil
 
As wind that you’ll best know
 
As wind within as how you refine
 
How it flows how it dances how it’s real…
 
 
 
As the sound of the sound of the sound of a sword
 
Slicing through air as dancer’s spinning limbs and body
 
And joy in eyes blinking collected rhythm…
 
As the whole sword’s point as circle of circles of circles
 
Just above the ground… wind flowing moving as a center point
 
As poise, as discipline, as refinement as pleasure. Precise… as
 
Abundance as Purpose… of how we live as trees.
 
By DeaneTR 9/5/09

Have you ever seen the giant old trees in story books? You know the
ones with the big gnarled trunks and a tiny tree canopy overhead?

 Well that same effect can be created with trees that are too old and
too damaged than what most tree pruners will want to save...

 Sometimes this process is seen as an eyesore and the trees are removed
entirely after five or six years. An example of this are the first two
trees...

 But sometimes as in the case of the 170 year old Walnut tree below,
the sprout branches are regularly pruned and an important landmark in
Downtown Santa Cruz is still alive and well...

 Back in 1994 when myself and others convinced the city to practice
this style of pruning the city's arborist was furious. He promised us
that the tree would die in a few years and it would never produce
walnuts again...

 Yet here we are 15 years later and this tree is still alive and still
producing Walnuts!

 This technique tends to work better with slower growing trees in drier
climates, such as this oak tree that grow in the San Francisco Bay
Area...

         

Click here to download:

Pruning_Living_Stumps_Removes_.zip (1819 KB)

A new style rapidly gaining popularity is carving dead trees into art. This process begins first by removing as much of the hazardous parts of the tree as possible. That way even once the tree ultimately rots, it will still be a relatively safe to be around. Once this is accomplished an artist is found to sculpt the remaining wood...

This particular Walnut tree in Eugene, Oregon was carved by two local artists and even after more than a decade the remaining structure of this tree has yet to significantly rot or decay.

Better yet, preserving the stump of this tree maintains the soil ecosystem that grew in complextity as the tree grew older. This means that the soils surrounding the dead tree are more complex and more healthy, which means appropriate new trees planted in the area will grow better, as well as be more resistant to drought and disease.

   

Click here to download:

Pruning_Making_art_out_of_a_de.zip (103 KB)

Many trees once topped or chainsawed in overly agressive ways lose their natural healthy shape and instead send up stump sprouts / suckers which makes the tree vulnerable to being damaged in windstorms.

Too often tree pruners recommend removing these trees entirely, yet over the course of several years these trees can be trained back to a healthy shape.

The photos of this Russian Wing Nut tree were taken in the second year of rehabilitation just before the last of the tall stump sprouts were cut.

The first year 1/3 of the tallest stump sprouts / suckers were removed at their base, as well as topped at varying heights.

In the second year the remaining stump sprouts / suckers were removed at their base, as well as topped at varying heights.

By the third year only a light pruning of sprout growth was neccesary as a more natural shaped canopy is now mostly shading out the trees ability to grow aggressive stump sprouts / suckers.

Originally nearly every sucker sprout on every branch of this tree reach up to a structurally unmaginable sixty feet in height... Now the tree at it's center reaches 50 feet while all the surrounding branches reach up to a range form 45-20 feet in height.

   

Click here to download:

Pruning_Crown_Restoration.zip (3323 KB)

This pruning job is about as aggressive as I'm willing to get... The client has a vegatble garden, as well as a house that's heavily shaded by this tree, so 35% of the branches were pruned away to create more light...

This pruning style is also a valuable way to protect trees from being blown over by storm winds...

Look carefully and notice that the entire length of the tree still has green branches... It's just that only the branches that least blocked the sunlight were kept.

           

Click here to download:

Pruning_Aggressive_crown_thinn.zip (627 KB)

Below is a letter and photos about a beautiful Douglass Fir tree in downtown Olympia...

Still waiting to hear back about doing the work for them this Winter.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

I’ve spent time examining your tree and can report to you that it is in good health with no signs of decay or weakness!

The Photo below is of the part of the tree that is probably most visually concerning to you. How the tree got this way is that approximately 38 years ago when the tree was much, much smaller it’s top was broken or cut off.

It appears that the tree rapidly recovered from this mishap by continuing to grow from a secondary top, which is what gives the trunk a bent look.

This injury would be a concern if there was any presence of a rotting stump from where it was topped. It would also be a concern if the living outside layer of the tree failed to grow over the wound where the trunk broke off / was topped. Your tree does not have these problems.

What also indicates that this part of the tree is live, healthy strong wood is the presence of three major branches growing out of the trunk from where it was injured. If at any point these branches die-off that indicates there may be a safety concern.  

Also due to recent construction in the area I’m happy to report that your tree is more protected from storm winds than before the construction.
Enclosed below are two photos of the part of your tree that is most affected by storm winds. The second photo is a rough photoshop edit of what thinning would do to protect your tree from storm winds.

The photo is taken from the direction that the strongest storm gusts would hit the tree and the second edited picture is to help you better understand how storm winds would better flow around and thru the tree after the tree is properly pruned. I recommend doing this work in late November or December of next year.

For this work I’d charge XXX plus additional costs for slash disposal… I can also put you in touch with other talented Arborists for additional bids that will likely be higher than mine ($400-$800)

--Be well, Deane Rimerman  

     

Click here to download:

Pruning_Simulated_crown_thinni.zip (1371 KB)

Portions of "I shall Not Be Moved"
by Maya Angelou

 Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:When the great tree falls - Maya Angelou.mp3]

 Download Here: http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/When the great
tree falls - Maya Angelou.mp3

 When great trees fall,
rocks on distant hills shudder,
lions hunker down
in tall grasses,
and even elephants
lumber after saftey.

 When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

 When grest souls die,
the air around us becomes
light, rare, sterile.
We breathe, briefly.
Our eyes, briefly,
see with
a hurtful clarity.
Our memory, suddenly sharpened,
examines,
gnaws on kind words
unsaid,
promised walks
never taken.

 Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.
Our minds, formed
and informed by their
radiance,
fall away.
We are not so much maddened
as reduced to the unutterable ignorance
of dark, cold
caves.

 And when great souls die,
after a period of blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.

  
----------------

 The Calls From the Earth
By Tre Arrow (while in Prison)

 Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:Tre Arrow - Deane TR - June29th2009.mp3]

 Download Here:http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/Tre Arrow - Deane
TR - June29th2009.mp3

  
Beyond these walls and razorwire fences, there is a greater world;
beyond the concrete and steel, the polluting cars and chemical plants,
beyond the humyn (sic) -made buildings and machines, there is another
world.  It is a place where time and age melt together and become
meaningless; a place where wisdom, truth, solace and beauty weave
their magic through all life; a place where the ancient wisdom of the
universe flows through the water's currents, seeps from the tree's
exhale, pours forth from the dancing of animals, pulsates from the
rocks and the dirt.

 Take a walk outside the world of lights, cars, roads and buildings,
and find yourself sitting quietly among the flora and fauna.  Here you
will find peace and beauty which is beyond humyn creation, which is
the source of all life on the planet, which flows through every living
thing and binds us together as family, and which brings certainty that
there is more at work than the busy-ness of capitalism, consumerism,
and material acquisition. This peace and beauty is worth protecting;
it is worth saving.  It is from the womb of our Mother that we all
emerge, and She is being attacked and assaulted.  We have an
obligation and responsibility to protect Her, as we would
instinctually protect our biological mother.

 Will you join in; will you listen to the calls for help; will you
stand up and oppose the crimes against life, against all life?  We are
all inextricably interconnected, and an injustice to one, humyn or
non-humyn, is an injustice to all life on this sacred planet.

 If not now, then when?  If not you and I, then who?

  
-----------------
Three Poems:

 McCoy - Buffalo Time
Meliors Simms - Firehorse

  
Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:Buffalo-fire-horse-summer-night.mp3]

 Download Here:http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/Buffalo-fire-horse-summer-night.mp3

  
BUFFALO TIME

 The universe has reached the limit of its expansion and time is in a
state of collapse. By noon, it's the 1870s and steam locomotives pull
into town loaded down with buffalo hides. Believing that by morning
we'll be experiencing the fourth Ice Age, the old man next door buys
500 hides and spends his early adulthood nailing them to his house.
http://www.ahapoetry.com/bvl/mccoy.html

 ----------

 Meliors Simms

 What is this firehorse to make of this fire forest,
smouldering into stark beauty?

 What a long line of sight between the trees:
it is a place to aim far.
Aim big, this place tells me, and don't act alone.

 I bring my arid heart
to this arid land
and set fire to my feelings.

 To look through the fire forest
is to see myself from afar:
the undergrowth flared off,
scorching my stiff scars
setting off my untamed heart again
thump thump thump
leaping across the landscape like a kangaroo

 There is such sweetness here in the regenerating green
life comes bursting out of the ashes
like water sparkling between rocks.

 http://meliors.blogspot.com/2008/10/cape-york-pt-4-fire-forests.html
----

 A Summer Night

 Alone confused dyslexic
I sit down where I find myself
in the middle of a field.
Around me the night expands
in concentric circles each
a different color: green, red, purple.
In a nearby ditch frogs
chant their sacred literature
at the bottoms of their voices.
I look up but the stars
are nowhere to be seen. Clouds
churn from skyline to skyline.
It takes a while but my breathing
returns to normal, the colors
contract to a single stone.
As I reenter the barn
my daughter standing at her easel
completes the letter A
triumphantly. The conclusive brushstroke
ploughs from left to right
with the force of the sun.

 Michael Fried
The Next Bend in the Road
The University of Chicago Press

 -----------------

 Mary Oliver - Bone
Mary Oliver - Yes

 Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:Mary Oliver - Bone - Yes! No!.mp3]

 Download Here:http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/Mary Oliver - Bone
- Yes! No!.mp3

 Bone

  
1.

  
Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape –

  
and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died

  
hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something –
for the ear bone

  
2.

  
is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where

  
once, in the lively swimmer’s head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only

  
two inches long –
and thought: the soul
might be like this –
so hard, so necessary –

  
3.

  
yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

  
unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn’t see anything
through its dark-knit glare;

  
yet don’t we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

  
4.

  
lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts –
certainties –
and what the soul is, also

  
I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,

  
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

  
~ Mary Oliver ~

 (Why I Wake Early, 2004)

 -------

 Yes! No!

 How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

 The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like
small dark lanterns.

 The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

 How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out

 Yes! No! The

 swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants
only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier
is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy
rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work.

  
~ Mary Oliver ~

 (White Pine)

 ------------------

 Two Poems By Deane

 Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:DeaneTR - Ocean Poem - Rescue.mp3]

 Download Here:http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/DeaneTR - Ocean
Poem - Rescue.mp3

  
RESCUE

  
Many birds lined along a phone line
In Perch watch listen say to all of us
Feet grip wire send signals to us
A flying tribe hidden voice sending
talon song mixed and disguised amidst
all phone line phone calls
we're hearing-speaking on...

  
Dolphins play round sunken buoys
Swimming and jumping first under then
out into air above flotsam
then back under...

  
Those of wings wonder
Who are the loser
of so much bright plastic?
Who lost all the hard to
hear and see
nets lines and hooks*

  
No ocean free
of plastic scattered surface and sunken tangle
No ocean free of fooling
us into drawing
us close the way food does?

  
Albatross diving into meal and
swallowing before it knows
this plastic is not meal but death...
And we really want to learn to live together?

  
Lines wires webs nets cables towers
in every direction
humans tangled in linear purpose
tangled non-humans even spiders
need more clear space for a new web**

  
More space to fly or swim
More self-owned lines as
circles of their own food and feed
Linear neo-mind tangle trap of
Too much thinking
Too tangled in wires gone astray
Too tangled to fly or swim
Too close to snare
Too unwanting in tangle-mind
to hear our cry for rescue
Our objection to decline...

  
In science they track the deaths
Oceanography as wings on a wire
Birds on our phone lines gripping our signal
Infiltrate our every phone word from above...
They know ocean-science-data
Amidst our phone ears and voices
They want freedom from our abandoned waste
From our means of production
From our undoing of mama's plenty...

  
They announce beneath our words
A truth of birds and renewal...
A shift of life affirming from here
on out and forever into flight

 Poem by DeaneTR © 2004
--------------

 Lesson One:

 Where are you in forever resprouting?
A forever attempt at covering
The land's clearing in green again
.
Where are you as this?
Where are as you gone
as returning
as limitless changing
as living forever?

 Imagine a time of Sahara as Amazon
Imagine a time of our tree-planet
So branch-vast and moss-rich that its
More than even imagination...

 Now a world of you as world young
As world growing quiet calm amid
most noise ever...
Where are you as this?

 Are you feeling dried up magic gone?

 First find out by knowing
Where to find heart-of-forest**
Where to find where no harm will ever come
Where no one tree ever knows less than free
Where you know you'll soon know a way
That will help you find your way

 As all our universe first saw it
As it all first saw you
As unending forest of land
As feeder of cloud back to ocean-salmon

 As feeder of floating ocean-wood adrift as ribbons
Adrift as currents of enormous archs
As floating log forest shade over ocean
As ecology parading on currents of wild seas

 It seems next to nothing now
Yet you still feed these giant waters you
Still are heart-of-forest
Still are plans to regrow all earth
Still are a new life growing on barren land
Still always a past that no longer is
Still to remember that you were born to be who you
Planned and wanted to be
Or else your asleep at wanting to be.

 Amidst so much success of the past now all
Seems lost in this thirst

 As no need to reach for light out from under shade
As sun-hunched in desert-sky

 Rest unmoved
Yet always movement-growing
Layer on layer it's as if it's you as all life

 Breath constantly reshowing reappearing...
It's you as you seek yourself as
clear free tall sun shade regrowing!

 Say out loud: "Yes, it will be that which I planned
And I am that I am and world leaps to green me ."

 Thank you for being...

 -----------------

 Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:Deane Tom end of July 09.mp3]

 Download Here:http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/Deane Tom end of July 09.mp3

  
------------------

 By Reg Sager
For Six Navaho Smoke Jumpers: Monument Forest, New Mexico

  
Listen Here:Play here:[Audio:Reg Saner - Six Navajo Smoke Jumpers.mp3]

 Download Here: http://forestpolicyresearch.org/audio/Reg Saner - Six
Navajo Smoke Jumpers.mp3

  
Around its small lake
the field chokes
where six black-haired men stare
at the emotional problems of fire.
It circles their last rock,
which is nothing but water.  Near them
the branches slobber
and weep as their clothes
begin to steam like boughs,
while high over fir
and lodge-pole the last of the magpies
flying hard against updraft
can do nothing about it.  Tree
after tree bursts
into harvest,
and the wide eyes of the men
understand.  In this thick breath
of nails, they wear skins
already captive.  Their teeth
will become black
as early rings of stones
in caves.  With the next gust
their body hair will curl,
then flash in tongues
teaching them all there is to learn
about seasons.  As the forest cools
they will blow like autumn
across America.

  
Reg Saner
from Climbing Into the Roots

    Poetry and the forest will converge Saturday as the Friends of the Seminary Hill Natural Area hosts its second poetry walk at the natural area in Centralia.

    The walk begins at 10 a.m. and ends at noon, and is open to anyone with a love of poetry and outdoors who is capable of walking the trails, said organizer David Underwood.

    Underwood will guide participants to stops along the trail where selected readings from poems relative to the forest and outdoors will be read aloud.

    “The first year was easy because it’s all the low-hanging fruit,” Underwood said of selecting poems. “This year I had to dig a little more.” http://www.chronline.com/articles/2009/06/25/news/doc4a43b3de28ada509569455.txt

Spontaneous musical improvisational chants
Grounded in roots of 969 poems that I choose as we play.

That I read without practice
That I read to make the moment clear
That we are all here

In this moment...
That life is too short to
Sing the same song twice!

Be well, Deane
----------------------
----------------------

Tom Rhodes - Wilderness Invocation

You desert, whose ever-shifting sands reflect the
      constant changing in our own lives,
Whose dry heat brings interludes of repose,
Show us the beauty that comes with purity
      and teach us how to simplify our lives.

You mountains, with stone peaks reaching for the heavens,
      who stood here even when the earth was formed,
You, of dizzying heights and ancient age,
Lend us your perspective,
      For our actions now may yet impact the ages to come.

You meadows and grassy hills,
Whose bright fields of wildflowers
      provide unparalleled beauty in our lives,
Provide us with the time to pause and reflect
       on God's artistry and playfulness.

You forests of sturdy oak, hued maple, and ever green,
You home of deer and bear and rabbit and eagle,
      shelter in our play and hostage to our ambitions,
Grant us your maturity,
      and the wisdom to truly know what we do to ourselves.

You age-old rainforest, rampant with life's creativity:
Your tangled masses of trees and vines
      embody our interdependent web.
You are diversity incarnate.
Bestow upon us the ability
      to appreciate the interconnectedness of all being.

You ocean of the deep, keeper of earth's last mysteries.
Beneath your ceaseless waves,
      in your quiet and dark womb did life first begin.
Remind us of our beginnings,
      keep us humble against your vastness,
And know that you are truly the water of life.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Anna Ruiz - There Is a River

There is a river of no return
flowing freely, consummately 
uncompromisingly
down a mountain path,
glacier worlds of pristine solidarity
meander along with multi-million national
group investment accounts, unaccounted
for conflicts with natives indigenous to local
Patagonia flora and fauna, I wonder if
Julius Popper would disappear into the wild
and still be king, lead modern expropriation
of natural resources,

(Is the hole in the ozone large enough 
for a rocket ship of 6.7 billion to pass through?)

If all men were giants, would there be room
enough on one small planet?

Would sheep be blind?

God save the world from human ignorance
let us break the binds to deep pockets of
a filthy currency that would cover our eyes, speak
not for our precious earthly home, the
guanaco, the centolla,
where should the penguins at Punta Tombo
walk?
who will hear the cries of dying rivers
forests and moors,  southern beech
and bogs,
who will mourn
the Alerce the carancho 
if Gaia’s song were to  end?

…when the calafate withers without berry…
-----------------------------
Anonymous - Crabby Old Woman

When an old lady died in the geriatric ward of a small hospital near
Dundee, Scotland, it was believed that she had nothing left of any value.
Later, when the nurses were going through her meager possessions, they
found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies
were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.

One nurse took her copy to Ireland. The old lady's sole bequest to posterity
has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the
North Ireland Assn. for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been
made based on her simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this little old Scottish lady, with nothing left to give to the world,
is now the author of this "anonymous" poem winging across the Internet:

What do you see, nurses?
What do you see?
What are you thinking,
When you're looking at me?

A crabby old woman,
Not very wise,
Uncertain of habit,
With faraway eye.

Who dribbles her food,
And makes no reply,
When you say in a loud voice,
"I do wish you'd try!"

Who seems not to notice,
The things that you do,
And forever is losing,
A stocking or shoe?

Who, resisting or not,
Lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding,
The long day to fill?

Is that what you're thinking?
Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse,
You're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am nurse,
As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding,
As I eat at your will.

I'm a small child of ten,
With a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters,
Who love one another.

A young girl of sixteen,
With wings on her feet,
Dreaming that soon now,
A lover she'll meet.

A bride soon at twenty,
My heart gives a leap,
Rememb ering the vows,
That I promised to keep.

At twenty-five now,
I have young of my own,
Who need me to guide,
And a secure happy home.

A woman of thirty,
My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other,
With ties that should last.

At forty, my young sons,
Have grown and are gone,
But my man's beside me,
To see I don't mourn.

At fifty once more,
Babies play round my knee,
Again we know children,
My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me,
My husband is dead,
I look at the future,
I shudder with dread.

For my young are all rearing,
Young of their own,
And I think of the years,
And the love that I've known

I'm now an old woman,
And nature is cruel,
'Tis jest to make old age,
Look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles,
Grace and vigor depart,
There is now a stone,
Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass,
A young girl still dwells,
And now and again,
My battered heart swells.

I remember the joys,
I remember the pain,
And I'm loving and living,
Life over again.

I think of the years,
All too few, gone too fast,
And accept the stark fact,
That nothing can last.

So open your eyes, nurse,
Open and see,
Not a crabby old woman;
Look closer - see ME!!

Remember this poem when you next meet an old person who you might brush
aside without looking at the young soul within. We will all, one day, be
there, too! (If we're lucky)
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Wendell Berry - No going Back

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over the grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

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Wendell Berry - Do Not Be Ashamed

You will be walking some night
in the comfortable dark of your yard
and suddenly a great light will shine
round about you, and behind you
will be a wall you never saw before.
It will be clear to you suddenly
that you were about to escape,
and that you are guilty: you misread
the complex instructions, you are not
a member, you lost your card
or never had one. And you will know
that they have been there all along,
their eyes on your letters and books,
their hands in your pockets,
their ears wired to your bed.
Though you have done nothing shameful,
they will want you to be ashamed.
They will want you to kneel and weep
and say you should have been like them.
And once you say you are ashamed,
reading the page they hold out to you,
then such light as you have made
in your history will leave you.
They will no longer need to pursue you.
You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.
They will not forgive you.
There is no power against them.
It is only candor that is aloof from them,
only an inward clarity, unashamed,
that they cannot reach. Be ready.
When their light has picked you out
and their questions are asked, say to them:
"I am not ashamed." A sure horizon
will come around you. The heron will begin
his evening flight from the hilltop.