.
.
In the empty lot - a place
not natural, but wild - among
the trash of human absence,
.
the slough and shamble
of the city's seasons, a few
old locusts bloom.
.
A few woods birds
fly and sing
in the new foliage
- warblers and tanagers, birds
wild as leaves; in a million
each one would be rare,
.
new to the eyes. A man
couldn't make a habit
of such color,
.
such flight and singing.
But they are the habit of this
wasted place. In them
.
the ground is wise. They are
its remembrance of what it is.
.
~ Wendell Berry
from The Selected Poems
.
