The Longer Prayer
Sophie Cabot Black
Field of silos, of did we keep enough
To keep us through; walk the fence-line where
The middle rail broke, reset the traps

By the manger. Did we pay enough
Attention; should have done with less, put up more,
Learned the ditch, repeated the row, the glare

Of sun in your eyes, again at your back, the undersong
Of the sickle to rise, and lower, the tractor
That still runs. Forgive the mind its winter, its gnaw—

The softening ground waits; the ridge
Where the sky steeples with spire, wind vane, rod
To receive what we cannot handle, in sight

As elsewhere small is the first light
To light, each room becoming many
Houses filled with their own good doings until astonished

You also remain. The unlost birds come back
To crown the trees and do not wonder
How each branch bursts into again, how free fall

Is ever the stars. Come home changed
Or be changed; every harvest will be
Weighed against the still to be done.
from the book GEOMETRY OF THE RESTLESS HERD / Copper Canyon Press
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This poem was written in the throes of our Covid lockdown, and wants to be a reminder, even if uncertain, of harvests to come. Perhaps the best way to think about loss, while in the midst of grief, is to remember the possible, the probable, and what the earth turns back to give us.

Sophie Cabot Black on "The Longer Prayer"
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"The house is dotted with items from Dickinson, which aired on Apple TV+ from 2019 to 2021. Starring Hailee Steinfeld as the titular poet, Dickinson was an early hit for the streamer, earning a Peabody Award and positive acclaim from critics—particularly those who were charmed by the show’s pairing of anachronistic, modern language with deeply researched historical production details." 

via ATLAS OBSCURA
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"The best description I know of the creative process can be found in Remedios Varo’s 1957 painting The Creation of Birds. In the painting, a figure—either half-owl or a person in an owl-costume—refracts distant starlight through a triangular magnifying glass. The refracted starlight dries birds drawn with a pen emerging from a violin worn around the owl-person’s neck. The birds, as their ink dries, lift off the page & into life."
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