The Inner Valley

Something is being told in the woods: aisles of shadow lead away; a branch waves; a pencil of sunlight slowly travels its path. A withheld presence almost speaks, but then retreats, rustles a patch of brush. You can feel the centuries ripple generations of wandering, discovering, being lost and found, eating, dying, being born. A walk through the forest strokes your fur, the fur you no longer have. And your gaze down a forest aisle is a strange, long plunge, dark eyes looking for home. For delicious minutes you can feel your whiskers wider than your mind, away out over everything.    ******* ✎ William Edgar Stafford (Hutchinson, Kansas, 17 January 1914 – Lake Oswego, Oregon, 28 August 1993). ◙ Artwork: Iván Ivánovich Shishkin.

The washing never gets done. The furnace never gets heated. Books never get read. Life is never completed. Life is like a ball which one must continually catch and hit so it won't fall. When the fence is repaired at one end, it collapses on the other. The roof leaks, the kitchen door won't close, there are cracks in the foundation, the torn knees of children's pants … One can't keep everything in mind. The wonder is that beside all this one can notice the spring which is so full of everything continuing in all directions - into the evening clouds, into the redwing's song and into every drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow, as far as the eye can see, into the dusk . ******* ✎   Jaan Kaplinski  (Tartu, Estonia, born 22 January 194 1). ◙ Artwork: Richard Diebenkorn