A Wonder Is What It Is: Nick Offerman Reads 'A Meeting,' by Wendell Berry

Nick Offerman: All right. Hello there, and welcome to A Wonder Is What It Is. I'm Nick Offerman, an actor and author and woodworker, but I'm not a poet myself. This is the fourth and final installment of A Wonder Is What It Is, a Poetry Month series in which I, Nick Offerman, read one poem per episode slowly and then share some clumsy musing on those lines of poetry, also by me, Nick Offerman, also slowly. It will come as no surprise to any returning listeners that today's poem comes from Wendell Berry, the poet, author, activist, National Humanities Medal recipient, and dear friend. Today's poem is from 1999, and it is called A Meeting.

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In a dream I meet

my dead friend. He has,

I know, gone long and far,

and yet he is the same

for the dead are changeless.

They grow no older.

It is I who have changed,

grown strange to what I was.

Yet I, the changed one,

ask: "How you been?"

He grins and looks at me.

"I been eating peaches

off some mighty fine trees."

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This lovely bit of free verse is very open to interpretation, but I always receive it to mean that we worry about things too much here in the present world. We are solemn and very serious about our journey. If our dear friends who have gone beyond this world could send us a message, it would be, "Don't sweat it so much, enjoy the simple things and eat a peach, buddy." Also, just the simple and beautiful notion that an agrarian's heaven is represented by mighty fine peach trees.

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Well, that seems like as nice a place as any to leave it for now for. Thanks to the team at All Of It with Alison Stewart for hosting these musings, and thank you for listening to the words of Wendell Berry from the voice of Nick Offerman on WNYC.

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