THE WHEEL
At the first strokes of the fiddle bow
the dancers rise from their seats.
The dance begins to shape itself
in the crowd, as couples join,
and couples join couples, their movement
together lightening their feet.
They move in the ancient circle
of the dance. The dance and the song
call each other into being. Soon
they are one — rapt in a single
rapture, so that even the night
has its clarity, and time
is the wheel that brings it round.
In this rapture the dead return.
Sorrow is gone from them.
They are light. They step
into the steps of the living
and turn with them in the dance
in the sweet enclosure
of the song, and timeless
is the wheel that brings it round.
~ Wendell Berry
As we approach Hallow’s Eve and All Saint’s Day, our attention is drawn wherever we look to ghosts, goblins, and spirits of all kinds-some good, some bad, some Saints, and some sinners, just like us folks who remain alive. Accounts of spirits returning to earth abound in folklore both on All Saint’s Day and especially on the day before.
Here at Merry Mount, some folks have said that they feel a strange presence as they approach the bottom platform of the darkly stained staircase that leads to the second floor of our farmhouse. While I have not experienced that feeling myself, I do welcome it. In fact, any spirit that may want to sit and relax for a while may join me on the front porch, or better yet, as Wendell Berry writes, may want to join us in a dance or song.
I like to contemplate Berry's "Wheel"-a place that allows information from the past to dance with the receptors of the present in an intimate sphere of awareness.
How about a song and dance?
Yours truly,
CPW
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