When Streams are Ripe and Swelled with Rain

 April is the cruelest month, or so T.S. Eliot told us in "The Waste Land."  And, here on the cusp of the 100th day of the current era, it seems a cruel wasteland indeed.

Here's a poem of resistance from Wendell Berry, which I found at a little poetry station that stands in front of a house on the 3000 block of Stowell Avenue that I often pass on my walk between work and Sendik's on Downer.

Our Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do

we have come to our real work

and that when we no longer know which way to go

we have come to our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that signs.

 

May you breed lilacs out of dead land, mix memory and desire, and stir the dull roots with spring rain.