I got out my collection of poems from Wendell Berry through the years of 1957 to 1982. Wendell is a writer with great clarity and sureness. He has a love for language and a dedication to the beauty in the land of Kentucky, family and community, tradition as a life work. He lived in Henry county in his ancestral home on the Kentucky River... a dedicated man who left a successful New York literary life to return home to Kentucky to write his authentic observations of life in a simpler time. I had him for my professor during the Vietnam war and we were listened to...without questioning our motives... with an open heart when I dared to ask questions that seem to threaten what our values were and where were we going in a time of turmoil. He spoke to us about thinking responsibly, maintaining our individuality and dared us to live an authentic life in the Arts. I should try to contact him now...he made a very strong impact on my way of thinking and looking at the world...then and even more now.
A Homecoming
One faith is bondage.
Two are free.
In the trust of old love,
cultivation shows a dark graceful wilderness at its heart.
Wild in that wilderness,
we roam the distances of our faith,
safe beyond the bounds of what we know.
O love, open.
Show me my country.
Take me home.
I feel that I was so blessed to have been able to be in his class...maybe even all the years later I reach out for his grace in written words. Thank You Wendell. Imagine and Live in Peace,
Mary Helen Fernandez Stewart
