Gravity
When despair for the world grows in me… Wendel Berry
The stoneweight near my heart
grows heavier with every headline,
every relentless dim-sighted hatred
delivered to the innocent
with bloody hands,
using excuses of righteous war
and vindication as if
any of us might claim the high ground.
In the soft light of sunrise
I lay my millstone on shoulders
of the Santa Lucia range,
wait for earth to counterbalance gravity
with its remedies of timbered mountains,
vast salt-tinctured oceans,
the cleft of my fertile valley
laid out before me in atonement.
Laura Bayless lives in Carmel Valley, is the author of four collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in many local and national publications. She has participated in seven Women’s Voices readings at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel and multiple Women and Food poetry presentations on the Monterey Peninsula. She is an Associate Editor of the Monterey Poetry Review.
When despair for the world grows in me… Wendel Berry
The stoneweight near my heart
grows heavier with every headline,
every relentless dim-sighted hatred
delivered to the innocent
with bloody hands,
using excuses of righteous war
and vindication as if
any of us might claim the high ground.
In the soft light of sunrise
I lay my millstone on shoulders
of the Santa Lucia range,
wait for earth to counterbalance gravity
with its remedies of timbered mountains,
vast salt-tinctured oceans,
the cleft of my fertile valley
laid out before me in atonement.
Laura Bayless lives in Carmel Valley, is the author of four collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in many local and national publications. She has participated in seven Women’s Voices readings at the Carl Cherry Center in Carmel and multiple Women and Food poetry presentations on the Monterey Peninsula. She is an Associate Editor of the Monterey Poetry Review.