"Our Real Work"

26 November 2025: Just came across this Wendell Berry poem and somehow it fits the moment, especially after another day filled with not knowing what to do or which way to go. 

Poetry continues to show up for me, blessing after blessing...

Two quick links: Appalachian writers taking on Big Coal

These are already a bit old, but worth posting:

1) Wendell Berry pulls his personal papers from UK over the University's relationship to the coal industry.

2) Silas House takes on an absurd, infantile, sexist attack on Ashley Judd over MTR.

Seems like a good place to include a Berry poem...how about this one?

"The Peace of Wild Things"

Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

(via the Poetry Foundation) 

Hmm...and let's give Silas a shout-out, too: consider buying a copy of The Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Volume II, featuring a new and very moving short story by House, "Recruiters."