Wendell Berry's "The Plan"

The Daily Poem

Goldberry Studios

Education For Kids, Arts, Kids & Family

4.6 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2024

⏱️ 5 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today’s poem imagines what you might do when you’re through paying taxes.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.
0:04.4	I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, April 15, 2024.
0:09.9	Today's poem is by Wendell Berry, and it's called The Plan.
0:15.7	Today is also Tax Day.
0:18.8	So if you are listening to this episode and have not filed your tax return, maybe you should
0:27.3	come back to this in a few minutes after you've squared that away, filed for an extension
0:33.1	at least, something.
0:34.4	God bless you.
0:36.2	Either way, as you endure this trial. They say that the only
0:42.4	inevitabilities, the only sure things in life are death and taxes. Today's poem is the inverse of
0:52.1	that truism. It's about a thing that's not likely to happen in this lifetime.
1:01.6	As you'll see, I'll read it once, offer a few comments and then read it one more time.
1:09.0	The plan.
1:19.1	My old friend, the owner of a new boat, stops by to ask me to fish with him, and I say I will,
1:22.3	both of us knowing that we may never get around to it.
1:29.6	It may be years before we're both idle again on the same day, but we make a plan anyhow, in honor of friendship and the fine spring weather and the new boat and our sudden thought of the water
1:36.0	shining under the morning fog.
1:48.4	It's a brief, beautiful little poem.
2:05.8	That starts with the very relatable experience of making plans with that friend that you both sort of know deep down, you suspect will never really come to fruition, and yet you're both making them in good faith. It's not as if one of you is
2:14.1	leading the other on or engaging in people-pleasing. Each of you is leading the other on or engaging in people pleasing, each of you is making
2:22.0	a kind of earnest declaration that you would very much like this thing to happen, even if you
2:28.2	both fear and suspect that it will never happen.
	...

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