Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that
it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.

--Mary Oliver

Separation

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

--W. S. Merwin

The Journey

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again,

painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light
fades quickly now,
you are arriving.

--David Whyte

Enough

Enough.
These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

--David Whyte

[Photo taken at Petit Manan Wildlife Refuge in Steuben, ME]

Season

This hour along the valley this light at the end
     of summer lengthening as it begins to go
this whisper in the tawny grass this feather floating
     in the air this house of half a life or so
this blue door open to the lingering sun this stillness
     echoing from the rooms like an unfinished sound
this fraying of voices at the edge of the village
     beyond the dusty gardens this breath of knowing
without knowing anything this old branch from which
     years and faces go on falling this presence already
far away this restless alien in the cherished place
     this motion with no measure this moment peopled
with absences with everything that I remember here
     eyes the wheeze of the gate greetings birdsongs in winter
the heart dividing dividing and everything
     that has slipped my mind as I consider the shadow
all this has occurred to somebody else who has gone
     as I am told and indeed it has happened again
and again and I go on trying to understand
     how that could ever be and all I know of them
is what they felt in the light here in this late summer

— W.S. Merwin, from The Vixen.

[Photo of Wallingford, VT]