image copyright Rebekah Choat

Those who give their thought
to seed, to love and the bringing to birth,
must know the sightless underside
of earth, and perhaps more than once,
for no one goes at no cost
to that place where what is dark,
more still than the hands
of the dead, remembers the light
again, and starts to move.

It is spring, and the little trees
that sprouted in the abandoned field
two years and more ago, striving
to grow, half-smothered under
the shadows of the tall weeds,
now rise above them
and spread their newleafed branches,
nothing between them and the light
sky, nothing at all.

~ Wendell Berry