Speaking peace

New Year’s Wishes 2010-2011

Friends and family, your continuing love for the world is my inspiration.

Here’s to doing just a little bit more, together, a little bit better in the days ahead.

Speaking peace at year’s end

Mists of incense thin

in the silence of a single lamp.

Outside, barely discernable

from here, drips

recall the night rains, street gutters rush

to overflow and underground basins gurgle

with abundance—real-time sutras

spoken on the native tongue of peace,

broken by a single pane of glass.

Stitches of sounds, of disquieting voices,

somehow from somewhere

out there.

**

And yet, and yes, praise is due. And when offered

there is no end to possibilities

yet to be conceived…

…where despite

all we have done wrong

the golden light of October

falls through the turning leaves.

from Wendell Berry's "Sabbaths IX"