It gets better.
If life is a day,
stretched out from hopeful start to end,
then we watch for it to get better.
Sometimes it can seem
a winter’s worth of fronts
roll in before noon.
But if a day is made up
of the four seasons circulating,
then spring is ever turning up.
Sometimes surprising us
in the way defiant blossoms
brace themselves against the wind.
Or jonquils mistake a winter’s
false spring to appear, brave and optimistic,
unfazed by inconsistent weather.
It gets so much better.
And if it doesn’t, we get more practiced
seeing the good.
At panning for it like gold,
sifting through the river’s sediment
for something shining.
And when we find it
we run around
exclaiming at our good fortune,
the nugget that weighs little
more than a feather,
enough to dine on for the months ahead.
And the young are looking at us
as though we had lost our heads,
we at the back end of our days,
going through our camera rolls.
How can we not see all the holes
in the day, they say?
And we are not seeing valleys
but hillocks for climbing,
and perceiving the changing view.
Or we are curling up in bed,
listening to rain on the roof,
believing in the hope that life gets better.
That nothing remains the same
is the eternal comfort
we each slowly learn.
And we, who have already lived
to half past one,
say to the newbies:
Slow down and make coffee, or tea.
Watch the front come in and shake
the blossoms of the cherry tree,
to then go again just as quickly.
That the new lambs resume their frolicking,
and the sun its descent beyond the hill.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
April 2022
‘Of all that God has shown me,
I can speak just the smallest word,
Not more than a honey bee
Takes on his foot
From an overspilling jar.’
—Mechtild of Magdeburg
Living Tree Poetry 