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The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

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Love you, thank you, mama. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

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founding

🙏🙏❤️❤️

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Wendell Berry is also who my own mom looked to for inspiration. Thank you, Wendy.

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Love you, April.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Spring

by Mary Oliver

Somewhere

a black bear

has just risen from sleep

and is staring

down the mountain.

All night

in the brisk and shallow restlessness

of early spring

I think of her,

her four black fists

flicking the gravel,

her tongue

like a red fire

touching the grass,

the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

I think of her

rising

like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against

the silence

of the trees.

Whatever else

my life is

with its poems

and its music

and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness

coming

down the mountain,

breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her —

her white teeth,

her wordlessness,

her perfect love.

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author

Thank you. ❤️🙏

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Tortures

Nothing has changed.

The body is susceptible to pain,

it must eat and breathe air and sleep,

it has thin skin and blood right underneath,

an adequate stock of teeth and nails,

its bones are breakable, its joints are stretchable.

In tortures all this is taken into account.

Nothing has changed.

The body shudders as it shuddered

before the founding of Rome and after,

in the twentieth century before and after Christ.

Tortures are as they were, it's just the earth that's grown smaller,

and whatever happens seems right on the other side of the wall.

Nothing has changed. It's just that there are more people,

besides the old offenses new ones have appeared,

real, imaginary, temporary, and none,

but the howl with which the body responds to them,

was, is and ever will be a howl of innocence

according to the time-honored scale and tonality.

Nothing has changed. Maybe just the manners, ceremonies, dances.

Yet the movement of the hands in protecting the head is the same.

The body writhes, jerks and tries to pull away,

its legs give out, it falls, the knees fly up,

it turns blue, swells, salivates and bleeds.

Nothing has changed. Except for the course of boundaries,

the line of forests, coasts, deserts and glaciers.

Amid these landscapes traipses the soul,

disappears, comes back, draws nearer, moves away,

alien to itself, elusive, at times certain, at others uncertain of its own existence,

while the body is and is and is

and has no place of its own.

— Wislawa Szymborska

(trans. Joanna Trzeciak)

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author

This one.

Thank you, Jeff.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Thank you for writing "in which I attempt the impossibility of articulating the language of my cells." That essay moved me deeply; it's profound and brilliant and important, and it helped get me through the past couple weeks.

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author

I’m so glad to know it was helpful. Thank you. And ❤️.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Home Warsan Shire

no one leaves home unless

home is the mouth of a shark

you only run for the border

when you see the whole city running as well

your neighbors running faster than you

breath bloody in their throats

the boy you went to school with

who kissed you dizzy behind the old tin factory

is holding a gun bigger than his body

you only leave home

when home won’t let you stay.

no one leaves home unless home chases you

fire under feet

hot blood in your belly

it’s not something you ever thought of doing

until the blade burnt threats into

your neck

and even then you carried the anthem under

your breath

only tearing up your passport in an airport toilet

sobbing as each mouthful of paper

made it clear that you wouldn’t be going back.

you have to understand,

that no one puts their children in a boat

unless the water is safer than the land

no one burns their palms

under trains

beneath carriages

no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck

feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled

means something more than journey.

no one crawls under fences

no one wants to be beaten

pitied

no one chooses refugee camps

or strip searches where your

body is left aching

or prison,

because prison is safer

than a city of fire

and one prison guard

in the night

is better than a truckload

of men who look like your father

no one could take it

no one could stomach it

no one skin would be tough enough

the

go home blacks

refugees

dirty immigrants

asylum seekers

sucking our country dry

niggers with their hands out

they smell strange

savage

messed up their country and now they want

to mess ours up

how do the words

the dirty looks

roll off your backs

maybe because the blow is softer

than a limb torn off

or the words are more tender

than fourteen men between

your legs

or the insults are easier

to swallow

than rubble

than bone

than your child body

in pieces.

i want to go home,

but home is the mouth of a shark

home is the barrel of the gun

and no one would leave home

unless home chased you to the shore

unless home told you

to quicken your legs

leave your clothes behind

crawl through the desert

wade through the oceans

drown

save

be hunger

beg

forget pride

your survival is more important

no one leaves home until home is a sweaty voice in your ear

saying-

leave,

run away from me now

i dont know what i’ve become

but i know that anywhere

is safer than here

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author

One of the best. Yes. Thank you.

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Wow, thank you. This is really intense, condensing so much human experience that’s often unseen and unheard. I like to think this kind of poem creates more awareness and compassion, underlining our shared humanity.

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Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

-- David Wagoner

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author

This is so beautiful. Thank you, Mary.

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Oct 31, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

lighthouse by Nayyirah Waheed

i am your friend.

a soul for your soul.

a place for your life.

home.

know this.

sun or water.

here

or

away.

we are a lighthouse.

we leave.

and

we stay.

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author

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

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Nov 2, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

The Low Road by Marge Piercy

What can they do to you?

Whatever they want..

They can set you up, bust you,

they can break your fingers,

burn your brain with electricity,

blur you with drugs till you

can’t walk, can’t remember.

they can take away your children,

wall up your lover;

they can do anything you can’t stop them doing.

How can you stop them?

Alone you can fight, you can refuse.

You can take whatever revenge you can

But they roll right over you.

But two people fighting back to back

can cut through a mob

a snake-dancing fire

can break a cordon,

termites can bring down a mansion

Two people can keep each other sane

can give support, conviction,

love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation

a cell, a wedge.

With four you can play games

and start a collective.

With six you can rent a whole house

have pie for dinner with no seconds

and make your own music.

Thirteen makes a circle,

a hundred fill a hall.

A thousand have solidarity

and your own newsletter;

ten thousand community

and your own papers;

a hundred thousand,

a network of communities;

a million our own world.

It goes one at a time.

It starts when you care to act.

It starts when you do it again

after they say no.

It starts when you say WE

and know who you mean;

and each day you mean

one more.

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author

one of my favorites. thank you.

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Mary Oliver writes so beautifully about grief; I think you could probably pick most of her poems (Heavy is a favorite) for a similar effect. But one of my favorites is an excerpt from In Blackwater Woods:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

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❤️ love her so much, yes. ❤️

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I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.

The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,

The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy

Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony

Of death and birth.

T. S. Eliot, East Coker

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author

Beautiful 🙏 Thank you.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Say Yes, by Andrea Gibson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=untGVUfVGdo

It starts:

"When two violins are placed in a room, if a chord on one violin is struck

the other violin will sound the note

If this is your definition of hope

This is for you

The ones who know how powerful we are

Who know we can sound the music in the people around us

simply by playing our own strings

for the ones who sing life into broken wings

open their chests and offer their breath

as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving

Spare those intent on proving god is dead..."

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author

Ooof. 💔❤️‍🩹

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Detail of the Woods

by Richard Siken

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.

A box made out of leaves.

What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.

Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.

I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.

From the landscape: a sense of scale.

From the dead: a sense of scale.

I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.

Everything casts a shadow.

Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything.

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author

This is so beautiful, thank you.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Every word Siken writes is entirely perfect -- he has two small volumes of poetry out, and a new more lyrical prose book coming out next year, finally!!! (He had a stroke a few years ago and it derailed the publication of another book of poems that was supposed to come out a couple of years ago.)

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Crush is extraordinary; it's also that rare thing: a truly original voice. To my ear, those poems don't sound at all like anyone else.

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author

just ordered it. thank you.

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Yes, that. 'Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out' might be my favorite written thing, period.

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Accidental poetry: I have to read a lot of obits for a particular part of my job, and I recently came across a stranger's condolence note to the family of another stranger on one of those "tribute pages." She had written: "I was so shocked by this loss. My deepest symphony." And I thought, 'Never has a typo been so perfect.'

To everyone grieving, all the time, which is all of us: My deepest symphony.

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Holy shit. This is perfect.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Great As You Are

Be like a bear in the forest of yourself.

Even sleeping you are powerful in your breath.

Every hair has life

and standing, as you do, swaying

from one foot to the other

all the forest stands with you.

each minute sound, one after another,

is distinct in your ears. Here

in the blur of mixed sensations, you can

feel the crisp outline of being, particulate.

great as you are, huge as you are and

growling like the deepest drum,

the continual vibration that makes music

what it is,

not some light stone skipped on the surface of things,

you travel below

sounding the depths where only the dauntless go.

be like the bear and

do not forget

how you rounded your

massive shape over the just ripened

berry which burst

in your mouth that moment

how you rolled in

the wet grass, cool and silvery, mingling

with your sensate skin,

how you shut

your eyes and swam far and farther

still, starlight

shaping itself to your body,

starship rocking the grand, slow waves

under the white trees, in the

snowy night.

(Susan Griffin, Bending Home)

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author

Oooof. Thank you, Sonya.

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I needed these words — thank you so much for sharing. I'll leave one of mine to keep the thread going. I hope it helps someone, somewhere: https://open.substack.com/pub/roxsar/p/chrysalis?r=3a36f&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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That was so beautiful, thank you Roxanna.

"... that's how you get a butterfly

a caterpillar eats herself

before the world does."

Yes. My heart. Love you.

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Nov 2, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

Good Bones by Maggie Smith

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful,

right? You could make this place beautiful.

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Oct 30, 2023Liked by Rebecca Woolf

World on Fire, Sarah McLachlan

Hearts are worn in these dark ages

You’re not alone in these stories pages

The light has fallen amongst the living and the dying

And I’ll try to hold it in, yeah, I’ll try to hold it in

The world is on fire

It’s more than I can handle

I’ll tap into the water

Try and bring my share

Try to bring more

More than I can handle

Bring it to the table

Bring what I am able

I watch the Heavens but I find no calling

Something I can do to change what’s coming

Stay close to me while the sky is falling

I don’t wanna be left alone, don’t want to be alone

The world is on fire

It’s more than I can handle

I’ll tap into the water

Try and bring my share

Try to bring more

More than I can handle

Bring it to the table

Bring what I am able

Hearts break, hearts mend, love still hurts

Visions clash, planes crash

Still there’s talk of saving souls

Still the cold is closing in on us

We part the veil on our killer sun

Stray from the straight line on this short run

The more we take the less we become

The fortune of one man means less for some

The world is on fire

It’s more than I can handle

I’ll tap into the water

Try and bring my share

Try to bring more

More than I can handle

Bring it to the table

Bring what I am able

The world is on fire

It’s more than I can handle

I’ll tap into the water

Try and bring my share

Try to bring more

More than I can handle

Bring it to the table

Bring what I am able

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author

❤️❤️❤️

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