Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Thursday, November 21st, 2024.

Today's poem comes from Wendell Berry, and it's called The Thought of Something Else.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

The Thought of something else.

1.

A spring wind blowing the smell of the ground through the intersections of traffic.

The mind turns, seeks a new nativity.

Another place, simpler, less weighted by what has already been.

Another place. It's enough weighted by what has already been. Another place.

It's enough to grieve me that old dream of going, of becoming a better man,

just by getting up going to a better place.

2. The mystery.

The old unaccountable unfolding. The iron trees in the park suddenly remember forests.

It becomes possible to think of going.

Three. A place where thought can take its shape as quietly in the mind as water in a pitcher,

or a man can be safely without thought, see the day begin and lean back,

a simple wakefulness filling perfectly the spaces among the leaves.

There is such an effortless simplicity in this poem that I really want to do very little

analysis of it. I think it speaks for itself pretty clearly and captures some very easily

recognizable yearnings, but then attempts to deal with them or settle them, calm them

without dismissing them, and that you can see and feel that upon even an initial reading or

...