Yesterday it was still January and I drove home
and the roads were wet and the fields were wet
and a palette knife
had spread a slab of dark blue forestry across the hill.
A splashed white van appeared from a side road
then turned off and I drove on into the drab morning
which was mudded and plain
and there was a kind of weary happiness
that nothing was trying to be anything much and nothing
was being suggested. I don’t know how else to explain
the calm of this grey wetness with hardly a glimmer of light or life,
only my car tyres swishing the lying water,
and the crows balanced and rocking on the windy lines.
~Kerry Hardie “Acceptance”
For some time I thought there was time
and that there would always be time
for what I had a mind to do
and what I could imagine
going back to and finding it
as I had found it the first time
but by this time I do not know
what I thought when I thought back then
there is no time yet it grows less
there is the sound of rain at night
arriving unknown in the leaves
once without before or after
then I hear the thrush waking
at daybreak singing the new song
~W.S.Merwin “The New Song” from The Moon Before Morning, 2014
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
~Thomas Hardy “The Darkling Thrush”
I need reminding that what I offer up from my own heart predicts what I receive there.
If I’m grumbling and falling apart like a dying vine
instead of a vibrant green tree~~~
coming up empty and hollow with discouragement,
entangled in the soppy cobwebs and mildew of worry,
only grumbling and grousing~~~
then no singing bird will come.
It is so much better to nurture the singers of joy and gladness with a heart budding with grace and gratitude, anticipatory and expectant.
I’ve swept my welcome mat; it is out and waiting.
The symphony can begin any time now…
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