Hello and welcome back to the Daily Poem here on the Close Reeds Podcast Network.

I'm David Kern. Today's poem is by Wendell Berry, somebody that most of you have probably read

at some length. Many of you are probably more familiar, however, with his fiction or his essays.

But if you are not familiar with his poetry, then hopefully today will be an impetus for you to

make yourself familiar with the broad and really fantastic canon of Barry's poetry.

For years and years now, Wendell Berry has been work on a series of poems

that he works on while he takes his solitary walks on his property in Kentucky, his farm,

walking along the riverfronts and through the woods and through the fields and with his sheep and his dogs.

And those poems are called the Sabbath poems.

And this particular poem was published in a collection called This Day, Sabbath poems collected and new.

And these poems were written from 1979 to 2013.

This particular poem was written in 1980.

It's just listed under the number two in the section on the 1980 Sabbath poems.

The eager dog lies strange and still who roamed the woods with me.

Then, while I stood or climbed the hill or sat under a tree awaiting what more time might say,

he thrashed in the

undergrowth, pursuing what he scared away, made ruckus for us both. He's dead. I go, more quiet now,

stillness added to me by time and sorrow, mortal law, by loss of company that his new absence

has made new.

Though it must come by doom, this quiet comes by kindness too and brings me nearer home.

For as I walk the wooded land, the morning of God's mercy, beyond the work of mortal hand,

seen by more than I see, the quiet deer look up and wait, held still in quick of grace,

...