‘Finally will it not be enough,
after much living, after
much love, after much dying
of those you have loved,
to sit on the porch near sundown
with your eyes simply open,
watching the wind shape the clouds
into the shapes of clouds?

Even then you will remember
the history of love, shaped
in the shapes of flesh, ever-changing
as the clouds that pass, the blessed
yearning of the body for body,
unending light. You will remember, watching
the clouds, the future of love.’

From A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 (1999) by American writer Wendell Berry. Suggested by Sherry Streeter (Member 47,075).