My previous column about the poet and writer Mary Oliver opened with this sentence: “If there is one certainty about life, it is that for each of us, it will conclude.” For another cherished and respected American poet and essayist who drew great solace from the natural world, this passing has come to be. 

On August 31, the masterful and yet humble writer and farmer, Wendell Berry departed from his physical form and continued journeying.

“Dear relatives and friends, when my last breath/Grows large and free in air, don’t call it death –/… Say that I have found/a good solution, and am on my way/To the roots. And say I have left my native clay/At last, to be a traveler; that  too will be so./Traveler to where? Say you don’t know.” (Excerpted from “Testament” by Wendell Berry).

Berry’s earthly life drew to a close at the age of 92, but the poet was exploring the mysteries of mortality all along. In my second column of 2026, I shared the following excerpt from Berry’s “Sabbath poem of 1994,” in which he raises a question: “Finally will it not be enough,/after much living, after/much love, after much dying/of those you have loved,/to sit on the porch near sundown/with your eyes simply open,/watching the wind shape the clouds/into the shapes of clouds?”

Among the other insightful poems emerging from the solitary Sunday walks he enjoyed on his Kentucky farm is “Sabbaths, 1993, I,” in which Berry reminded us, “No, no, there is no going back./Less and less you are/that possibility you were.” 

Berry chooses not to leave us with a sense of despair, however, urging, “Now more than ever you can be/generous toward each day/that comes, young, to disappear/forever and yet remain/unaging in the mind./Everyday you have less reason/not to give yourself away.”

To all of us Berry gave himself, in the words and thoughts that arose from his deep relationships with the natural world and the humans who shared it. May we, in turn, choose to “be generous toward each day” and to lose ourselves in the giving to others. Journey on, inspiring friend.