The Black Mare

There is a poem called "The Wild Geese" by Wendell Berry that starts out

Horseback on Sunday morning....

And that is how my week did begin. On a sweet black and white walker mare who knows these hills and loves her purpose, who carried me out with new friends for two and a half hours through the unusually warm December day, up the lower flank of Sleepy Creek Mountain, across harvested cornfields laced with deer tracks, past veteran apple orchards, down into damp hollows and stony streambeds, scrambling up steep paths into sunlight, the horses laughing with their manes and Lee and Mary trying to convince their respective mounts that we were going to slow down enough at the top to enjoy the view. The poem goes on:

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.

There were geese, and a few startled ducks, a redtail watching from the emptied trees on the field edge, and always the wide, graceful arcs of vultures going about their necessary work in calm vigilance. Yes, quiet in heart. Yes, in eye clear.

Truly, what I need is here.

That I have arrived mostly intact, and my little ones are all well, and the big red boy looks so marvelously happy wearing only wind and sunlight: home at last.

And this is last night of autumn; tomorrow the shortest day and the longest darkness. For me, that is the turn of the year. For me, it is the morning of that first day when the light will be longer that is the welcome and longed-for gift. And I am so very grateful. There were enough times since the last axis of dark-to-daylight when I did not believe I wanted to wait it out, did not believe that I was strong enough to keep my balance, to keep my heart and ethics and all the damaged bits of me gathered close enough. There were times I wanted to just set it all down and stop. A story with an end but no conclusion. A failure of narrative and nerve.

Yet here I am. Here. My biodiverse loved ones with me, in MY house, sound and strong. Tomorrow I will set out to see my family for a few days; there is this major holiday that had quite escaped my notice these past years, though this year I managed to scramble a bit and put some things together. I'll do better next year, when I'm not so tired.

For now, I have what I want, all I want. This is the place to lay down the grief and know the land will handle it. This is the time I had hoped might come when breathing is even and easy and each day I am not afraid. I am not choosing one pain or loss over another. I am not sorting the essential from the merely loved. There is no emergency.

There is emergence.
Here, in the dark of the year. Such peace.

Much love to you all, whom I have thought about often and am glad to read again after such long absence.

Tonight I need that courageous violin against the dark background of the organ. The violin begins alone, a strand of clear but strangely vulnerable melody against that deep power, a slant of blue light across a brown so profound you cannot look deeply enough to find the bottom. Then that brave single voice is joined first by a few and then an ensemble of companions and together they lift not only themselves but also the great heavy shoulders of the organ rolling beneath them, and the whole rises, lightens, and calms me. Just a bit. Just enough. I have things to think about.

The wonderful poet Marvin Bell has a line: "Now is the time when our hearts must enlarge to hold the losses we have ahead of us."

Yes, but how much larger must it grow? and how many more losses will there be?

( This morning my friend Tom, whom I have not seen in some while, called to tell me he is dying. )