The death of Wendell Berry this week infused my algorithm with his poems, set to animation, superimposed over photographs, or simply the poem, black times new roman over white, letting the words speak for themselves. Some poems slide by without a thought, some take the breath away. I've always like Berry's poetry - he was a kind of environmentalist I suppose, but principally an advocate for slower, more connected and more grounded living. What are the simple things that give our lives meaning - our connection to others, the land, nature - and asking us not to forego a simple life for one that appears better, like large scale farming or over consumption.

This poem got me in the feels, probably as I'm coming up to the two year anniversary of Dad's death, but also other friends I've lost over the years. I remember the lovely things about them - but they are very much stuck in time. I remember Sally's love for sunflowers, my grandmother plucking apricots and making pancakes, my grandfather singing Irish songs. They are perfect, changeless, simple moments in time - as if the best of them are distilled into a handful of uncomplicated, pure memories. It is "I" who has changed, caught in the complications of life.

A Meeting - Wendell Berry

In a Dream I meet my dead friend. He has, I know, gone long and far, and yet he is the same for the dead are changeless. They grow no older. It is I who have changed, grown strange to what I was. Yet I, the changed one, ask: "How you been?" He grins and looks at me. "I been eating peaches off some mighty fine trees."

The poem took my breath away as I remembered Dad's daily apple, core and all. I remember him liberating mandarins from a tree quite clearly not on public land. I remember his love of simple things - the beauty of architecture, the camera freezing a water drop as it spun down from the great heights of a waterfall.

My existence carried on - we got caught up in the stress of buying and selling a house, of work, of petty grievances and dramas, of worries about money, health, world affairs. I am no longer what I was, but the 'changed one', 'grown strange to what I was', wondering if I will ever find the peace of the earlier me, less encumbered by the things I have allowed myself to be encumbered by.

I can imagine this meeting, and often do. He had a way of saying that I shouldn't worry about things, and refocusig me on the good things, like standing in my parents garden eating mandarins and blood oranges straight from the tree.

With Love,