#201: Mountain life with a sprinkle of poetry
Dear reader,
I attempted to write a newsletter on the mountains yesterday. But I scrapped it for a collection of eight lovely poems I read instead, accompanied by photographs I’ve clicked of the mountain life and nature bonding I’ve been experiencing:
Joy by Clarissa Scott Delaney
Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
Like the roistering wind
That laughs through stalwart pines.
It floods me like the sun
On rain-drenched trees
That flash with silver and green.
I abandon myself to joy—
I laugh—I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered.
The Once Invisible Garden by Laura Foley
How did I come to be
this particular version of me,
and not some other, this morning
of purple delphiniums blooming,
like royalty—destined
to meet these three dogs
asleep at my feet, and not others—
this soft summer morning,
sitting on her screened porch
become ours, our wind chime,
singing of wind and time,
yellow-white digitalis
feeding bees and filling me—
and more abundance to come:
basil, tomatoes, zucchini.
What luck or fate, instinct,
or grace brought me here?—
in shade, beneath hidden stars,
a soft, summer morning,
seeing with my whole being,
love made visible.
How to Not Be a Perfectionist by Molly Brodak
People are vivid
and small
and don’t live
very long—
Altitude by Lola Ridge
I wonder
how it would be here with you,
where the wind
that has shaken off its dust in low valleys
touches one cleanly,
as with a new-washed hand,
and pain
is as the remote hunger of droning things,
and anger
but a little silence
sinking into the great silence.
The Lesson of the Falling Leaves by Lucille Clifton
the leaves believe
such letting go is love
such love is faith
such faith is grace
such grace is god
i agree with the leaves
More by Alex Dimitrov
How again after months there is awe.
The most personal moment of the day
appears unannounced. People wear leather.
People refuse to die. There are strangers
who look like they could know your name.
And the smell of a bar on a cold night,
or the sound of traffic as it follows you home.
Sirens. Parties. How balconies hold us.
Whatever enough is, it hasn’t arrived.
And on some dead afternoon
when you’ll likely forget this,
as you browse through the vintage
again and again—there it is,
what everyone’s given up
just to stay here. Jeweled hairpins,
scratched records, their fast youth.
Everything they’ve given up
to stay here and find more.
The Trees by Philip Larkin
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.
Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too,
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.
Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.
The Apple Orchard by Rainer Maria Rilke
Come let us watch the sun go down
and walk in twilight through the orchard's green.
Does it not seem as if we had for long
collected, saved and harbored within us
old memories? To find releases and seek
new hopes, remembering half-forgotten joys,
mingled with darkness coming from within,
as we randomly voice our thoughts aloud
wandering beneath these harvest-laden trees
reminiscent of Durer woodcuts, branches
which, bent under the fully ripened fruit,
wait patiently, trying to outlast, to
serve another season's hundred days of toil,
straining, uncomplaining, by not breaking
but succeeding, even though the burden
should at times seem almost past endurance.
Not to falter! Not to be found wanting!
Thus must it be, when willingly you strive
throughout a long and uncomplaining life,
committed to one goal: to give yourself!
And silently to grow and to bear fruit.
All photographs have been clicked in and around Jedi Green Forest Home, which has truly become a home away from home. ❤️
I urge you to go on a walk today. Look at the trees and life around you. Feel awe.
Sending sunshine and crunchy apples from the mountains,
Rohini
Your letter always bring a sprinkle of smile to my day :)
it is so well written it is a simply a warm hug to my heart :)