For Embodying Sweetness: Emily Berg

May 3, 2020, Kate Belew With Emily Berg (Sea Cliff, New York)

I got to the edge of what I knew and found 

that inside-out and outside-in are perhaps

the very same thing. Sometimes I think about forests

How many days I’ve sat perfectly still in the damp leaf

litter trying to become a part of the wilderness around me

I know that I am not good, but that is not my question here 

I want to become like them, the birds, the deer, the fox, and the unfurling

new shoots of spring. What do they know that we don’t?

Listening, soft pawed, and careful being. Thank you for

being guardians of secrets from the old way, for embodying

sweetness. Small deer in that clearing

You linger while the flies buzz about your ears

and we make eye contact, briefly, but 

where you go I can’t follow.