although most days dawn familiar
today from this bench I can hear
children sing the songs they know
about love and loss they don't know
amidst laughter--these are the petty
triumphs I want, the amiable teasing
practice for adulthood or adolescence
while song comes in lashes of breath
in skeins of sound, spinning a cocoon
around pain, placing it gently into trees
that are beginning... to open their hands
so I can put my heart at the quiet mercy
of these top-20 tunes, feel the light lift
at the horizon of each child's laughter
imagining even their chatter as prayers
as promises of continuous tomorrows
________________________
Pic: From yesterday's walk east along The Red Cedar. The paths are flooded; I snuck around a few parking lots to bypass the submerged sections.
14 comments:
We are dealing with soggy flooded paths too right now! There's a lot of sidestepping going on.
Oh I love this. Putting your heart at the mercy of these children's innocence and hope is such a lovely and bittersweet concept.
Nice.
I remember spring in Ohio being like that, pools of water everywhere.
I love the sense of hope in these words. You reference to finding solace in nature made me think of the Wallace Stegman quote that a pastor included in today's daily Lenter reflection:
"When despair of the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water."
This is so beautiful, Maya- sad and hopeful. And- wow, why are the paths flooded? Is it from melting snow? Or rain?
The third stanza is so incredibly beautiful. I could see it and feel it immediately. Incredible work here, maya.
'tis the season!
Thank you, Suzanne!
Thanks!
It took me a minute to make the Oberlin-Ohio connection :).
"rests beauty on the water..." How beautiful!
Thank you for sharing, Lisa!
It reminds me of "The Peace of Wild Things" by Wendell Berry https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-peace-of-wild-things/
Thank you, Jenny.
We've had some rain, I suspect it's mostly Spring thaw... YAY!
Thank you, Nance! Thank you <3
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