A peom by Wendell Berry

Awake At Night

Late in the night I pay
the unrest I owe
to the life that has never lived
and connot live now.
What the world could be is my good dream
and my agony when, dreaming it,
I lie awake and turn
and look into the dark.
I think of a luxury
in the sturdiness and grace
of necessary things, not
in frivolty. That would heal the earth, and heal men.
But the end, too, is part
of the pattern, the last
labor of the heart:
to learn to lie still,
one with the earth
again, and let the world go.

I like this poem and I like its author. In another book I'm reading by Wendell Berry-Home Economics- he talks a lot about top soil and how it is so ordinary yet so extraordinary. We can "preserve and collaborate" in the things it does, but we cannot actually do what it does. It makes life out of death. It turns dead leaves into food for descendents. It resurrects. It holds water as well as drains it at the same time; has man created such a substance? "A healthy soil is made by the life dying into it and by the life living in it, and to its double ability to drain and retain water we are complexly indebted, for it not only gives us good crops but also erosion control as well as both flood control and a constant water supply."

Plus, he talks about how we must measure it in quantity AND quality. In our capitalistic business practices, so often the numbers are what are important and the sturdiness, the health of an object or the product, is always a nice thing to have but not a necessity. First comes squeezing the most for the least. The quality of the object, in many cases, isn't top priority. But with soil, capitalists can't ignore the quality of it. It must be healthy to produce the most and it must be cared for properly in order to be sustained. It demands attention and health. It keeps us in check.

It makes me excited about nature. It makes me want to respect the ground and grass and even the dead leaves that can be an eyesore sometimes. It makes me want to be all hippie-ish and Native American and talk about the spirit life in everything and start adopting parts of my yard into my family. Yup, there is sister sunflower and cousin cardinal. It makes me want to be a farmer and enter into a relationship with the dirt. About the quantity vs quality thing: it makes me wonder if it has something to teach us about how we do business in general. Perhaps it is a stretch and unrelated and this thought path is leading nowhere. But think about it. Could the care and consideration that goes into cultivating good soil be applied to how we make other products? How our production and consumption affects the quality of the earth, all humans everywhere, the air........