In the dark of the moon, in flying snow, in the dead of winter,
war spreading, families dying, the world in danger,
I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.
           --Wendell Berry
              "February 2, 1968"

The poetry on the agenda for Light to Read By is always scheduled for Sunday morning, and it isn't discussed, it's read aloud. Participants choose one or two that particularly touch them and just read. There is no identifying the theology that underlies the compositions, no debating the poet's orthodoxy, just the words, descending like snowflakes.

Except this morning there were no snowflakes to watch. The temperature had risen and the wind picked up, and as the trees tossed they shed the casings of ice that had formed around their bare branches. The ice broke into shards which pelted the windows and the roof with such force that our voices could hardly be heard above the clatter.

Someone read the poem quoted in its entirety above. I tried to remember February 2, 1968. I was a junior in college then, living in a dorm room that overlooked a parking lot. I was studying 18th century British literature, 20th century European novel, and 20th century British poetry, taking a swimming class and a health class, and without  doubt at least two other classes whose names and content I have utterly forgotten.

February 2 was a Friday that year. This was during what I call now my "Hebrew period," when my interest in a Franklin and Marshall College student named David was keen. So that evening I probably attended the sabbath service and the supper afterward at the Jewish student center on College Avenue. David was a passionate anti-war activist. I know (from looking it up just now) that Lyndon Johnson gave a press conference that day at which he addressed questions about the Tet Offensive, a series of battles that would come to be seen as the turning point in the Vietnam war. And so after the service we probably gathered with others of David's activist friends and talked about this.

Thirty-five years have dimmed the memories some. I did not keep a journal then, and all I can pull from the tangle of images and awarenesses that linger somewhere in my mind is an impression of who I was and what I believed about myself and the world then. Like Wendell Berry, I was an optimist, and I remain so. Once again, I live in a world in danger, wars and rumors of wars spreading all around. Only this time I am more keenly aware of what is at stake, and how much I love what I stand to lose.

I took my leave quickly after lunch. By four o'clock I was installed in the place I would stay for the next three days. I changed my clothes and then went to the hotel restaurant where I was meeting a friend I hadn't seen in a while. There was a TV on in the lounge and a newspaper on the bar, the first I'd seen of either since Friday. The space shuttle Columbia had broken up Saturday morning on re-entry, a safe landing only minutes away. I didn't ask if the groundhog had seen its shadow.