Something

I should write to you;
it's only polite,
but what to say
between everything and
nothing?
I know--
something.

Waiting

My garden is sleeping. These are the long days of Winter. At least to my mind they are like the darkness before the dawn. There are no flowers to cheer me, no green to freshen the landscape made bleak by ice and snow. Even the sunshine, welcome as it is, reminds me of how long I must wait before Spring comes to stay. I miss the songs of the birds. I miss the warmth of the sun. I miss the long walks on my favorite paths. But I must wait.

It is the waiting that I need so very much-- and that I very much do not want. There are many lessons here, if only I will learn them. While my garden is sleeping, I am waiting. And learning.

Taking tea on my twenty-first birthday, Part 1

On the morning of my twenty-first birthday I awoke to find myself in the place which had occupied my daydreams for as long as I could remember. It was nearly mid-April and the streams of Spring were coursing once again through the countryside of Stratford, a world alive with so many English beauties and wonders that I could scarcely begin to apprehend them all . I walked in a waking dream, so it seemed then and still seems, along cobbled streets which ran to and from the river Avon. Here and there pairs of swans like kings and queens were gliding upon the silvered water as the sun streamed from sapphire skies. I watched the clouds collide and pass each other, blown by strong and silent winds aloft; and soon there began to fall the tiniest of snowflakes, like the laughter of children from a distance. There I stood in the center of the loveliest snow globe I had ever seen as the scenes unfolded before me.

The Secret Sits

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

--Robert Frost

Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.

"Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

--Robert Frost