Dear rain

NEW YEAR’S DAY

Lying on a hammock under

trees brimming with summer

I gaze at the undersides of leaves

and birds’ nests. An inverted

green dome.  A cathedral of calm.

Caressed by breezes laced with

the fragrance of wood smoke,

jasmine and river-breath. Trees

drop their leaves and birds their

song. Little gifts of benediction.

The sun through the leaf-lattice

twinkles like bits of broken, yellow

glass, like the deity in a stained

glass window, playful not solemn,

playing hide-and-seek with me.

Blissfully unaware, unmindful

that on its third satellite the

inhabitants have broken time

into pieces and labelled them

for convenience and celebration.

And so, we send fireworks into

the air and make resolutions,

forgetting, quite ungratefully 

it is the fireball in the sky that

got us through yet another orbit.

~~~

The Patience of Ordinary Things

by Pat Schneider

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

~ Pat Schneider

"Another River: New and Selected Poems"

The power of awe - tanka

What's a poem but

the shell around the heart being

split open by awe

beauty comes out of hiding

and love does a little dance

~~~