You tried our patience.
You scared us to death.
During a global pandemic,
you sent heat domes, wildfires
tornadoes, hurricanes and floods.
We lost forests, highways,
crops, homes, whole towns.
Some people and so many animals died.
There are not enough tears
in the world for all of our pain.
And yet.....
this earth is so beautiful.
It takes my breath away.
As we see the new year in,
we are hopeful, happy,
ready to do it all
again.
Shared with earthweal's open link.
Beneath the epidermis, top-left quadrant,
I feel the pinch: where memory resides,
three-quarters (or five-sixths?) of a lifetime long.
How many years are left, to gaze on loveliness,
consort with dogs, pen my rhymes?
We always want more, when this moment
- now - so richly layered, is perfect
and Enough.
We let so much slip by, may only realize
how glorious it all is when mobility is gone,
and we're viewing life through a single window pane,
when our bed has become a portal
for our dreams. In our darkest midnights, still,
sometimes we fly.
My bones are bending to the earth
like a witching wand, a tuning fork,
attuning themselves to Mother Earth's low hum.
In those profligate years, we thought time endless,
spent it gloriously, foolishly,
those days when we felt forever young.
Now memory sings, now pinches,
Time woven through with snippets of wonder:
sea-fog wisping across small islands,
smell of sea salt and clumps of kelp,
a raven's throaty croak, an eagle's dive.
Such gratitude
that I am still
alive.
Things under the sky in the human world
may be going awry, but a glorious red sunrise
spread across the heavens
behind the barn this morning.
I opened my eyes on wonder.
The clouds are heavy with predicted snow,
so we throw another log on the fire,
make another cup of tea
and count our blessings:
tall pines with woodpecker,
two bunnies chasing each other
across the yard, hills gleaming blue-white
through the kitchen window,
two soft-nosed horses in the pasture,
the dog playing with her new Christmas squeaky,
warmth and food and long slow yuletide days.
Soon I will head home through the mountains
to the sea, to catch my breath once more
in unceasing wonderment at waves and sky,
forest and ever-changing tides.
Beauty abounds.
Every day, in every way,
it is all around.
For earthweal, where Brendan asks where we find peace and beauty. When we find it everywhere, we are fortunate indeed.
Already, tomorrow is Christmas eve.
Yesterday, the grey sky barely lifted.
It grew dark at four o'clock.
We drove through the mountains in the rain,
into the misty valley,
Christmas lights winking in the gloom.
Even the horses were sheltering in their stalls,
but the juncos and hummingbirds were
as hungry as ever at the feeders,
enjoying their pre-Christmas meal.
We leave the tree lights on all day
to cheer us, remembering other years
when the whole family gathered,
noisy and laughing.
So much has happened since.
One year, happy with your gifts,
you said "I'm so happy, I'm sad."
You were always making us laugh.
Now you sit in a wheelchair
in a nursing home,
half of your body not working.
Sometimes, now, I make you laugh,
a startled laugh that lifts my heart,
because if we didnt laugh, we'd cry.
Somehow life goes on
through all the highs and lows.
Somehow, this strangest of Christmases,
like all the others,
will come and then will go.
For my son Jeff, only 50 years old, who suffered a stroke last summer. It is good we can't see ahead to what can befall us in our lifetime.
Through the mountains,
cedar and spruce
are blanketed in deep snow,
like tall Christmas angels
clothed in white.
It is another Christmas,
my brother-in-law's black truck
making its faithful passage
between my home and the farm,
where a bright-eyed dog
and two whuffing horses
with soft noses await
my arrival.
There will be a fire
in the fireplace,
a real Christmas tree in
the new big window,
and the house's new footprint
lying over the house our mother
once lived in. I wander the house,
noting the changes with delight,
small dog at my heels hoping
for treats.
So many years have passed
since we first walked the original rooms
with our mother. How she loved
her first years there, baking bread,
feeding chickens, before her health
suddenly declined and she left us
way too soon.
All beauty will be lost
but even loss can be beautiful,
the poet said. And there is such beauty
in remebering all the lost loves,
the revered humans, the
loving-eyed animals who blessed
our lives, beauty in
the layers of memories
blanketing them, the way deep snow
wraps the winter trees
in shimmering radiance.
Inspired by "Upon Discovering My Entire Solution to the Attainment of Immortality Erased from the Blackboard Except for the Word 'Save" by Dobby Gibson. Italicized lines are hers.
for earthweal: SOLSTICE (Nadirs and Zeniths)
Inspired by Reverence by Marianne Kunkel
