It Isn't Friday

But I felt like sharing these stanzas from Wendell Berry's Sabbaths 1998 VI.

By expenditure of hope,
Intelligence, and work,
You think you have it fixed.
It is unfixed by rule.
Within the darkness, all
Is being changed, and you
Also will be changed...

For every year is costly,
As you well know. Nothing
Is given that is not 
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

Lines to muse on as the year draws to its close.