Greek worry beads Hermopoulis is the main port city on Syros, a sleepy island in the Cyclades. Today, when I should have been grading, I confess I took a detour and tinkered a bit with my Greek novel, sprucing it up. And I spent some time dreaming over these photographs of Syros, taken by my friend, colleague and travelling companion, Shawn Madison Krahmer Heal. A street in Hermapoulis In gorgeous technicolor Approaching Syros
Travel The railroad track is miles away, And the day is loud with voices speaking, Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking. All night there isn’t a train goes by, Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, But I see its cinders red on the sky, And hear its engine steaming. My heart is warm with friends I make, And better friends I’ll not be knowing; Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going. Edna St. Vincent Millay
Photo by Elijah St. Amant As much of the world hunkers in lockdown, waiting out the coronavirus pandemic, I find my life has grown quieter and the small things--a garter snake in the iris patch, three turkey vultures poised on a neighbor's roof--have the power to sooth. That's why this poem seems perfect for this moment in history: The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting in their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free. --Wendell Berry
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