For those curious about "Clover"

Here are some thoughts I wrote down back in October, edited slightly:

Tonight I read to the sprout four Wendell Berry poems: The Sycamore, The Peace of Wild Things, Except, and Sowing. Apparently she was as rowdy for the readings as she was for much of the rest of the day, though I couldn’t feel it very well.

Berry has another poem, which I did not read aloud, called February 2, 1968:

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.

One internet denizen named Jeff Hawkins writes that the poem “directs me to the honor and effectiveness of small, wholesome, congruent-with-nature's-life acts amidst the clamor of cries for big solutions.” Berry himself has also written of sowing clover that the act “enrich[es] the earth” and is “the beginning of green,” a way of “mingl[ing] in the fate of the world.”

Growing up, clover stood out to me for its simple beauty. My family had dishes featuring a pattern of clover-leaves and -blossoms, and I could smell freshness and spring when singing the Delaware state song:

Oh the hills of dear New Castle

And the smiling vales between

Where the corn is all in tassel

And the meadowlands are green

Where the cattle crop the clover

And its breath is in the air

Oh the sun is shining over

Our beloved Delaware!

The statist message didn’t totally stick, but pastoral appreciation did. Clover made me (and my family's guinea pigs) happy. And aside from these small happinesses, it seems to represent to me a successful coexistence and cohabitation of nature and culture.

I like clover (Clover) as a name. I think it is fitting for our daughter who, I am certain, will enrich the earth.