p

The flocking blackbirds fly across

the river, appearing above the trees

on one side, disappearing beyond

the trees on the other side. The flock

undulates in passage beneath the opening

of white sky that seems no wider

than the river. It is mid-August.

The year is changing. The summer's young

are grown and strong in flight. Soon now

it will be fall. The frost will come.

To one who has watched here many years,

all of this is familiar. And yet

none of it has ever happened

before as it is happening now.

Wendell Berry

q

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old -- reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth. 

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

p

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a book in a used book store that
piqued my interest. It was by someone I had never heard of - Juan
Ramon Jiminez. What caught my interest is that he won the Nobel prize
for literature in 1956. Not surprisingly, there is some fine writing
here. One brief example:

The Water in the Water

I should like my life
To fall into death
Like this tall stream of lovely water,
In the supine water of the morning,
Rippling brilliant, sensual, joyful,
With all of the world dissolved in it
In gay and shining grace.

Juan Ramon Jiminez (trans. by H. R. Hayes)

q

The greatest courage is the courage to be happy.
Ladakhi saying

q

Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true
security to be found.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh