A Moderner's Lament

A new poem dedicated to Wendell, Walt, and Mary

Hello, friends.

I have a poem-in-progress to share with you today, birthed from my lament this morning as I noticed the birds chirping long after they began… and as I realized I spend more time looking at screens than out windows… and as I willed my broken body out of bed and yearned to one day climb mountains¹ again…

Healing isn’t easy. Neither is embodiment in this modern, fragmented world.

I hope Wendell, Walt, and Mary² can forgive me. I also hope that they might be proud of me, too.

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But first, here’s a little Wendell Berry poem that talks with my poem as if they were old friends. It’s a fragment from his Sabbath poems in Given.

Sit and be still
until in the time
of no rain you hear
beneath the dry wind's
commotion in the trees
the sound of flowing
water among the rocks,
a stream unheard before,
and you are where
breathing is prayer.

by Wendell Berry

Photo by Mason Hassoun on Unsplash

A MODERNER’S LAMENT*
by Kimberly Phinney
forthcoming in my second poetry book, Exalted Ground

Too busy click-clacking my nails against the keyboard, 
typing out a thought I will soon forget, 
I did not hear the mockingbird’s early autumn trills 
or the palm’s leaves rub against the air.