Nature’s first green is gold.
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
but only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
Robert Frost
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Category: Poetry
Anew
September is gone. October, begun. The first day of each month is like beginning anew. Turning a new leaf, strumming a new song. I read a poem, by a poet named Wordsworth, today. Quite outdated, but not really. The lines in one of his poems rang a bell, for me. He wrote,
Up the brook
I roamed in the confusion of my heart,
Alive to all things and forgetting all.
… I gazed and gazed, and to myself
I said, ‘Our thoughts at least are ours.
Wordsworth, from “Poems on the Naming of Places”
‘The confusion of my heart, alive to all, forgetting all. “Our thoughts at least are ours”,’ describe the freedom I feel outdoors, and it dawned on me, why it is that I love rivers, streams, lakes, and the sound of water, so. In places like these, I meditate, without even knowing, and feel at peace. Out there, I am not alone.
Gentle Soul
A rainy day, I walked from the opening of the bridge seen in the background. When I got to the other side I encountered this Gentle Soul, whose name is forgotten to me, if I ever knew it. She asked me if I would take her picture with her iPhone to send to her son, living in London. I said, “Of course!” She added that her father had died in the past year. She was visibly sad, and lost. I asked her if I could take her picture with my camera and she consented. She and I parted ways.
After I conversed with a merry couple by the bridge, I headed to an ancient church down the lane. It is St. Michael’s. As I entered the tiny chapel, I caught a glimpse of my new friend, brushing a tear from her eye. I quickly fled from the doorway, and she came out. We exchanged new words. I asked her about her dad, and she changed the subject. Again, we parted ways. And, the last I saw her was in the distance walking in front of the train station, at Betws Y Coed. To this day I wonder where she fled. This poem by Wadsworth, reminds me of my encounter with a long lost friend.
The Arrow and the Song
I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.
I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
For Earth Day
And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
Shelly
On Children
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and he bends you with his might
that his arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies
so he loves also the bow that is stable.
Kahlil Gibran
Down The Stairs
Yesterday morning early, I glanced at a report in Time Magazine, about a young woman in New York City. She was carrying a baby stroller, with her baby in it, down the stairs of the subway station. The mother was found dead, after impact. Fortunately, the baby was O.K. It wasn’t certain if the mother died from a preexisting condition, or from the fall. The article said that it is not uncommon for people to carry their baby in a stroller down the stairs at the subway station, and that others will often help, but not always. In this case, it wasn’t clear if anyone had offered a hand, or not. When I began my day with this story, I was struck by an incredible feeling of sadness, for this woman, and I don’t even know her. They quoted her brother to say ‘she was a wonderful mother’.
John Donne wrote in his poem, “No Man is an Island”;
Every man’s death diminishes me.
I felt diminished, by the news of this young woman’s death.
November 1
Enter November
Here’s November,
The year’s sad daughter,
A loveless maid,
A lamb for the slaughter,
An empty mirror,
A sunless morn,
A withered wreath,
The husk of corn,
A night that falls,
Without a tomorrow,
Here’s November,
The month of sorrow.
“The New Book of Days”
October 28th
Autumn Sigheth
Wind bloweth
Water floweth
Feather flieth
Bird goeth
Whither, bird?
Who can tell?
None knoweth…
Fare-well.
Wind bawleth,
Rose fadeth,
Leaf falleth.
Wither, leaf,
Where you fell,
Winter calleth…
Fare-well.
Tree turneth
Bonfire burneth,
Earth resteth
Sleep earneth.
Wither, earth?
To dream a spell
Till flower returneth…
Sleep well.
“Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art” John Keats
“Miles From Nowhere”
“Peace”
Home of Keats and Shelley, with views of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome.
Gathering Together
People gather together – Friends, family and maybe strangers, too, like autumn leaves, on the ground. Behind each visage, within each beating heart, lie dreams, fears in life and death – and loss. Loved ones are reminisced, and tears fall, while the void of loneliness is filled. Time stands still, like it does, for fallen leaves, and each person, surrounded by love, forgets, for a moment, who they are, or want to be.
On Tiffany Creek 