COLD COMFORT IN The BUCKET

MOVING INTO THE DARK

If you pause to think about it you must admit that we are always going into the unknown.  WE barricade ourselves from that truth by going into familiar places or seeing people we  know well.

But life still unfolds moment by moment and is packed with surprises. Maybe that is why some of us  become control freaks--trying hard to control and limit the parts of our lives that we can control and limit.  But even that is changing as we age--foods that I once ate with  great appetite are now somehow unsavory or unappealing.  
The pain that I had hated for so long is supplanted by a new pain that makes me almost wish the old pain would return.  This new one is harsh and so unpredictable.

The lessons that time teaches are hard but they also have a  brilliance. They force us to cherish what we  do have--what is left..  And to see the value in the commonplace to love the face that the world still shows us of  day and night and the passing seasons.

Te Deum by Charles Reznikoff

     Not because of victories
     I sing,
     having none,
     but for the common sunshine,
     the breeze,
     the largess of the spring.

     Not for victory
     but for the day’s work done
     as well as I was able;
     not for a seat upon the dais
     but at the common table.

After Frost’s Moon Compass by Jane Buel Bradley

A silver eyelash in the sunset sky
draws me outside to look and dream the why
this monthly promise always stirs my soul
and keeps me hopeful that before the whole
full moon lights up the autumn’s darkest night
I shall find words to speak of my delight
in this world’s beauty and begin to face
the waning and the darkness with some grace.

Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

NOTHING HUMAN STAYS  EITHER. We are always in the act of leaving.

.Packing up is difficult, full of tiny questions: will the predicted weather hold? Which shoes will blister tender feet?  But, what I am certain will be useful are the words that comfort and guide into the unknown, which is after all, though we might wish it otherwise, the only place we travel.

We are halfway through SEPTEMBER here in

Rhode Island.  Time to buy apples and drink cider.

Soon we will be at the EQUINOX. 

One moment of perfect balance of darkness and light.