p

Because we spill not only milk

 

 

Because we spill not only milk

Knocking it over with an elbow

When we reach to wipe a small face

But also spill seed on soil we thought was fertile but isn't,

And also spill whole lives, and only later see in fading light

How much is gone and we hadn't intended it

Because we tear not only cloth

Thinking to find a true edge and instead making only a hole

But also tear friendships when we grow

And whole mountainsides because we are so many

And we want to live right where black oaks lived,

Once very quietly and still

Because we forget not only what we are doing in the kitchen

And have to go back to the room we were in before,

Remember why it was we left

But also forget entire lexicons of joy

And how we lost ourselves for hours

Yet all that time were clearly found and held

And also forget the hungry not at our table

Because we weep not only at jade plants caught in freeze

And precious papers left in rain

But also at legs that no longer walk

Or never did, although from the outside they look like most others

And also weep at words said once as though

They might be rearranged but which

Once loose, refuse to return and we are helpless

Because we are imperfect and love so

Deeply we will never have enough days,

We need the gift of starting over, beginning

Again: just this constant good, this

Saving hope.

 

~ Nancy Shaffer ~

 

q

We are visitors on this planet.  We are here for ninety, a hundred years at very most.  During that period we must try to do something good, something useful with our lives.  Try to be at peace with yourself and help others, share that peace.  If you contribute to other people's happiness, you will find the true goal, the true meaning of life.

        Tenzin Gyaltso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

 

p

Rejoicing with Henry

Not that he holds with church, but Henry goes
Christmas morning in a tantrum of snow,
Henry, who's eighty-two and has no kin
and doesn't feature prayer, but likes the singing.

By afternoon the sun is visible,
a dull gun-metal glint. We come to call
bearing a quart of home-made wine a mile
and leading Babe, our orphaned hand-raised foal.

This gladdens Henry, who stumps out to see
Babe battle the wooden bridge. Will she
or won't she? Vexed with a stick she leaps across
and I'm airborne as well. An upstate chorus
on Henry's radio renders loud
successive verses of "Joy to the World."

In spite of all the balsam growing free
Henry prefers a store-bought silver tree.
It's lasted him for years, the same
crimped angel stuck on top. Under, the same
square box from the Elks. Most likely shaving cream,
says Henry, who seldom shaves or plays the host.

Benevolent, he pours the wine. We toast
the holiday, the filly beating time
in his goat shed with her restive hooves. That's youth
says Henry when we go to set her loose,
Never mind. Next year, if I live that long,
she'll stand in the shafts. Come Christmas Day
we'll drive that filly straight to town.
Worth waiting for, that filly. Nobody says

the word aloud: Rejoice. We plod
home tipsily and all uphill to boot,
the pale day fading as we go
leaving our odd imprints in the snow
to mark a little while the road
ahead of night's oncoming thick clubfoot.

 

Maxine Kumin

q

 

Dear Friends,

I apologize for the hiatus.  I have been experiencing some upheaval in my life and so have not been able to attend to my ps and qs.  Thank you for your patience.  I hope that from here on, I will be able to be back on track.

I will you all the best during this holiday season, whatever you may be celebrating – or not, as the case may be.

Stephen

 

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others.  And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.

                        Etty Hillesum, “An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943”