Advice for a Gray Afternoon

 

Do not assume the worst, a trap 

Loneliness sets for old age, 

Or make impossible demands 

On your equally lonesome peers. 

Set your children free, 

Not always at your beck and call. 

Because your needs keep growing 

And are endless, don’t imagine 

There are answers to everything 

Your heart cries Yes to. 

Give yourself permission to question 

Certainties you once bet your life on. 

Establish and maintain a good forgettery, 

Welcome that angel with others. 

Make trust the keeper of your house. 

Sit in the sun that banishes doldrums, 

Useless apologies, guilt. 

Open your eyes, uncurl your fingers, 

Take in what you need. 

Give sleep the upper hand, 

Fall often into the arms of that god.

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo of my beautiful mother who makes her own sunshine].

Questions Before Dark

Day ends, and before sleep

when the sky dies down, consider

your altered state: has this day

changed you? Are the corners

sharper or rounded off? Did you

live with death? Make decisions

that quieted? Find one clear word

that fit? At the sun's midpoint

did you notice a pitch of absence,

bewilderment that invites

the possible? What did you learn

from things you dropped and picked up

and dropped again? Did you set a straw

parallel to the river, let the flow

carry you downstream?

                     —Jeanne Lohmann

Praise What Comes

surprising as unplanned kisses, all you haven't deserved
of days and solitude, your body's immoderate good health
that lets you work in many kinds of weather. Praise

talk with just about anyone. And quiet intervals, books
that are your food and your hunger; nightfall and walks
before sleep. Praising these for practice, perhaps

you will come at last to praise grief and the wrongs
you never intended. At the end there may be no answers
and only a few very simple questions: did I love,

finish my task in the world? Learn at least one
of the many names of God? At the intersections,
the boundaries where one life began and another

ended, the jumping-off places between fear and
possibility, at the ragged edges of pain,
did I catch the smallest glimpse of the holy?

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo from Honeymoon Island Causeway, Dunedin, FL]

What the Day Gives

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November

what I hoped to do comes back,

asking.

 

Across the street the fiery trees

hold onto their leaves,

red and gold in the final months

of this unfinished year,

they offer blazing riddles.

 

In the frozen fields of my life

there are no shortcuts to spring,

but stories of great birds in migration

carrying small ones on their backs,

predators flying next to warblers

they would, in a different season, eat.

 

Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world

that plunges in a single day from despair

to hope and back again, I commend my life

to Ruskin’s most difficult duty of delight,

and to that most beautiful form of courage,

to be happy.

--Jeanne Lohmann

Autumn in the Fields of Language

Without wind the yellow leaves

hang slack. Maple, elm and oak

lift torches to the blue of heaven.

A scarlet burning bush ignites the air.

Evergreens comfort the eye,

relief from all that fire and gold.

When my last warm season's done

and time's come to leave this world

of words, bright fields of language

where I play and sing, let flame

in me some final brilliant work

like autumn leaves in changing lights.

--Jeanne Lohmann

[Photo from Wallingford, Vermont]