Returning

Returning

I was walking in a dark valley and above me the tops of the hills had caught the morning light.
I heard the light singing as it went among the grassblades and the leaves.
I waded upward through the shadow until my head emerged,
my shoulders were mantled with the light,
and my whole body came up out of the darkness,
and stood on the new shore of the day.
Where I had come was home,
for my own house stood white where the dark river wore the earth.
The sheen of bounty was on the grass, and the spring of the year had come.

-- Wendell Berry