A mind that has confronted ruin for years Is half or more a ruined mind. — Wendell Berry

Small creatures die because

larger creatures are hungry.

How superior to this

human confusion of greed

and creed, blood and fire.

Sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry wind's

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing

water among the rocks,

a stream unheard before,

and you are where

breathing is prayer.

Ask the world to reveal its quietude —

not the silence of machines when they are still,

but the true quiet by which birdsongs,

trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms

become what they are, and are nothing else.