April Lindner

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