.
.
Explanations topple into their events,
merely other events, smaller and less
significant. They disappear, or die away
like little cries at sundown, and the old trees
receive the night again in dignity
and patience, present beyond the complex
lineages of cause and effect, each one
lost to us in what it is. For us, the privilege
is only to see, within the long shade,
the present standing of what has come and is
to come: the straight trunks aspiring
between earth and sky, bearing upon all years
the year's new leaves.
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~ Wendell Berry
from A Timbered Choir
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