………………….I see the piles
of books I was going to read next
there they wait like statues of sitting dogs
faithful to someone they used to know
but happiness has a shape made of air
it was never owned by anyone
it comes when it will in its own time
-W.S. Merwin, from “December Morning”
HOW TO BE A POET
(to remind myself)
I
Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill—more of each
than you have—inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.
II
Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.
III
Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
-Wendell Berry
APOSTLE
An enemy whom God has made a friend,
A righteous man discounting righteousness,
Last to believe and first for God to send,
He found the fountain in the wilderness.
Thrown to the ground and raised at the same moment,
A prisoner who set his captors free,
A naked man with love his only garment,
A blinded man who helped the world to see,
A Jew who had been perfect in the law,
Blesses the flesh of every other race
And helps them see what the apostles saw;
The glory of the lord in Jesus’ face.
Strong in his weakness, joyful in his pains,
And bound by love, he freed us from our chains.
-Malcolm Guite
Listen to the poet read his poem here.
In the last year or so, I changed my mind about bread baking. I think it was in 2019 that I had decided not to bake bread — any more! Even though I’d been baking all kinds of yeast breads for most of my life. That was okay for a while, but recently, I realized it just didn’t feel right, to eliminate that art and craft entirely.
I planned to get back into making sourdough loaves, but week after week I never made time to assemble the ingredients for the “pre-ferment” that would collect wild yeasts from the air. Then when I was at my daughter Pippin’s earlier this month, I found that she had a good one going. She was happy to share it with me, so I moved half of her starter to a new quart jar and fed both jars a couple of times while I was there, and then brought the one home.
Today I used it to make a “sponge,” by combining one cup of the starter with two cups of water and three cups of (rye) flour. I will let that ferment for a couple of days and hope to bake just one loaf from it this week. Part of the reason I had given up bread baking was that I had too much bread to use or give away; the solution to that would be to make one loaf at a time — which I am certainly not accustomed to doing.
After I set the bowl of small sponge on the table, I went off to the church kitchen to help bake our special holy bread called prosphora. And today is my name day, on which I remember St. Joanna the Myrrhbearer. That’s three things that make me happy, and if I hadn’t been so busy about them, I might have figured out a way to tie the threads together for a blog post, the way I made a sponge out of several parts. If the bread turns out well, possibly it will be the unifying loaf.
Gladsome Lights 