Lamps

This morning when I turned on the lamp, it flickered, and then went dark.  It is decades old; my husband's mother used to read by it. It is large, and not very practical, but I have always been fond of it. I searched for a light bulb, but, as typical for these sort of interruptions, we have none in the house. I read a poem anyway. This is one of those times when I will not elaborate with a photograph; the author's images provide more than enough light. 

I think I shall enjoy this book very much. 

 

Spring Evening in Sparse Woods

I can hear the red-winged blackbirds calling, squawking as 

they do around a ripe cornfield, but it's still spring, the corn 

barely up. They make a noise now that rises with the cloud of

new dusk. In the woods across the road the grass is trying to be 

quiet because the night is coming, while the long branches of the

lone evergreen are lifting up the half-moon as if it were a child.      

  

Darkness Sticks to Everything 

Tom Hennen 

"From a Country Overlooked'

I received this poem this morning from an email from the World Community of Christian Meditation.  Many of us need to at least periodically gaze at a landscape that is not under siege by the unrelenting hunger of this society.  Poet Tom Hennen speaks to my soul this morning and I am grateful.  Let us all find a quiet spot today and linger.  That simple act can begin to heal, not only ourselves, but our beleaguered world.  Yes, we are that connected and God is that close.  

There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
from the moon-filled ditch
as you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
with happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
without any effort by the shining insects
that are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
to the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-winged blackbirds and sloughs.                
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.  

    

 “From a Country Overlooked” by Tom Hennen in DARKNESS STICKS TO EVERYTHING (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2013), p. 74.