If you sit outside long enough
to become a part of the garden furniture,
a ripple of ornamental grass,
and still, still yourself
as the birds which carry on singing,
ambivalent to your presence –
the tui,
and the flitting fantails.
If you can stay beyond
the display of intermittent sunshine,
its measured distribution,
and pull your rug up
upon your knees,
watch the bunching clouds roll in,
if you can sit then,
until they have scattered themselves
in variances of grey and white,
and a darker moisture laden blue,
a long grey skein of wool
through which the sun retreats
beyond a fast closing peephole.
If you can wait then,
a statue in the rising wind,
a woman with pen in hand, resting her quill,
if you can still yourself
to register each shift in atmospheric pressure,
each signal of precipitation,
you might become in time,
less dismayed and inclined
to resist life’s elemental changes,
and more like the birds
ringing in the new,
whatever it be, sun, wind, or rain squall.
You might become less intently focused
upon weather forecasts,
or tomorrow’s gloomy outlook,
and maybe less regretful even,
or pessimistic and introspective,
less resentful,
and increasingly open,
hesitantly optimistic,
not so dependent upon circumstances
or sunshine probability.
And instead,
you might consider how
you have shed clothing in the heat
and braved the chill,
have become like the birds
singing through all weather,
and have seen,
how in the space of a day
an outlook can change,
and a grey sky revert back to blue,
and a sun re-emerge,
drawing back curtains as though it were still morning
and you had just come out
with your cup of tea,
expectant,
and intent upon drinking her in,
the light that can change in a millisecond
and then re-appear, as though surprise,
she had not gone anywhere.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
June 2023
Praise the wet snow
~ iiGloria, by Denise Levertov, from Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney’s shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.
Living Tree Poetry 