Posted 7:21 AM by John Bell
After twelve hours of traveling time from Venice to Sarasota to Newark to Dulles to Front Royal, I am home. As much as I enjoyed the time with my parents, there are few pleasures better than a night's sleep in one's own bed. We had rain while I was gone, and the fields are lusher than when I left. I judge the progress of spring by the line of green creeping of the mountainside. It was three quarters the way up the ridge line when I left in April. Now the crest is in leaf. In celebration of homecoming, here is the poet, essayist and novelist Wendell Berry's riff off a classic by Robert Frost:

STAY HOME

I will wait here in the fields
to see how well the rain
brings on the grass.
In the labor of the fields
longer than a man's life
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.

I will be standing in the woods
where the old trees
move only with the wind
and then with gravity.
In the stillness of the trees
I am at home. Don't come with me.
You stay home too.