in this long season

This is my April 29 poem, because yesterday was a bad migraine day and I'm a day behind. That means two poems on this, the last day of April and poetry month (A SAD DAY), but I am posting one now and one later instead of posting them together. So here, per request of K, is Wendell Berry.

Shall we do without hope? Some days
there will be none. But now
to the dry and dead woods floor
they come again, the first
flowers of the year, the assembly
of the faithful, the beautiful,
wholly given to being.
And in this long season
of machines and mechanical will
there have been small human acts
of compassion, acts of care, work
flowerlike in selfless loveliness.
Leaving hope to the dark
and to a better day,
receive these beauties freely
given, and give thanks.

—Wendell Berry, "Shall we do without hope?" 2007. I got this poem from poetryisnotaluxury, but it's actually an excerpt from poem II in 2007 of "Sabbaths: 2005-2008" in Wendell Berry, Leavings (Counterpoint, 2010). Berry is highly excerptible, in my opinion, and this very much stands on its own. Also I love it, obviously.