Vision

       

                            Chapter Twenty-seven

               OUR   RIVER   RUNNING   CLEAR

       

                                    Watercolor by Winslow Homer

 A vision for Kinniconick, in the words of a poet:

             “Memory, native to this valley,

              will spread over it like a grove,

              and memory will grow into legend,

              legend into song,

              song into sacrament.”  

Wendell Berry, one of Kentucky’s greatest sons, a renowned author and poet, was born in the Kentucky River valley and lives there still.  Most of his work is dedicated to the land that he loves and to preservation of the environment.

When I discovered “A Vision”, one of his most eloquent poems, I was struck by his message of renewal and hope in the face of desecration.  He urges us to “to survive, to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it”, and one day “the river will run clear, as we will never know it”.

Those of us who have loved and continue to love the Kinniconick Valley have known “the abundance of this place, the songs of its people and its birds” and will never lose hope that Kinney will “run clear again “.

A  VISION   by  Wendell  Berry

If we will have the wisdom to survive,
to stand like slow growing trees
on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it…
then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live
here, their houses strongly placed
upon the valley sides…
The river will run
clear, as we will never know it…
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down
the old forest, an old forest will stand,
its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.
Families will be singing in the fields…
Memory,
native to this valley, will spread over it
like a grove, and memory will grow
into legend, legend into song, song
into sacrament. The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.

This is no paradisiacal dream.
Its hardship is its reality.