The country where he lives

is haunted

by the ghost of an old forest.

In the cleared fields

where he gardens

and pastures his horses

it stood once,

and will return. There wii be

a resurrection of the wild.

Already it stands in wait

at the pasture fences.

It is rising up

in the waste places of the cities.

When the fools of the capitals

have devoured each other

in righteousness, 

and the machines have eaten

the rest of us, then

there will be the second coming

of the trees. They will come

straggling over the fences

slowly, but soon enough.

Window Poems

by Wendell Berry