The Gift of Gravity by Wendell Berry

All that passes descends,

and ascends again unseen

into the light: the river

coming down from sky

to hills, from hills to sea,

and carving as it moves,

to rise invisible,

gathered to light, to return

again. "The river's injury

is its shape." I've learned no more.

We are what we are given

and what is taken away;

blessed be the name

of the giver and taker.

For everything that comes

is a gift, the meaning always

carried out of sight

to renew our whereabouts,

always a starting place.

And every gift is perfect

in its beginning, for it

is "from above, and cometh down

from the Father of lights."

Gravity is grace.

All that has come to us

has come as the river comes,

given in passing away.

And if our wickedness

destroys the watershed,

dissolves the beautiful field,

then I must grieve and learn

that I possess by loss

the earth I live upon

and stand in and am. The dark

and then the light will have it.

I am newborn of pain

to love the new-shaped shore

where young cottonwoods

take hold and thrive in the wound,

kingfishers already nesting

in a hole in the sheared bank.

"What is left is what is"--

have learned no more. The shore

turns green under the songs

of the fires of the world's end,

and what is there to do?

Imagine what exists

so that it may shine

in thought light and day light,

lifted up in the mind.

The dark returns to light 

in the kingfisher's blue and white

richly laid together.

He falls into flight

from the broken ground,

with strident outcry gathers

air under his wings.

In work of love, the body

forgets its weight. And once

again with love and singing

in mind, I come to what

must come to me, carried

as a dancer by a song.

This grace is gravity.