For an Absence

When I cannot be with you
I will send my love (so much
is allowed to human lovers)
to watch over you in the dark --
a winged small presence
who never sleeps, however long
the night. Perhaps it cannot
protect or help, I do not know,
but it watches always, and so
you will sleep within my love
within the room within the dark.
And when, restless, you wake
and see the room palely lit
by that watching, you will think,
"It is only dawn," and go
quiet to sleep again.

- Wendell Berry

The Record (excerpts)

I know the panic of that wish to save the vital knowledge of the old times,

handed down,

for it is rising off the earth, fraying away

in the wind and the coming day . . .

As you depart

toward the coming light, turn back

and speak, as the creek steps downward

over the rocks, saying the same changing

thing

in the same place as it goes . . .

• Wendell Berry, "The Record"