Geese practicing social distancing on the Delaware River.
Monday Morning Musings:
“Neither the spider has planned for the leaf nor the leaf for the spider — and yet there they are, an accidental pendulum propelled by the same forces that cradle the moons of Jupiter in orbit, animated into this ephemeral early-morning splendor by eternal cosmic laws impervious to beauty and indifferent to meaning, yet replete with both to the bewildered human consciousness beholding it.”
–From Maria Popova, Figuring, quoted in Brainpickings
“The heart’s reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.”
–Jane Hirshfield, “The Weighing”
I dream of the oak tree
its roots tunneling
expanding through darkness
linking to other roots
in connections we never see
even as I do see—
do you?–
the branches saluting the sun,
the buds opening, sleepy-eyed
to greet the sun
and do you gaze, dazzled
to see how bushes, flowers, trees
literally bloom overnight—
do you hear the robin’s scolding–
“Look around you!”
One crow flies,
then another
calling, gathering in a tree,
“Now” they say.
“Now.”
And I do look–
to the sky
and the ground below.
Which is the reflection, I wonder,
perhaps reality is the upside-down world,
The World in a Puddle. Photo of a puddle in the parking lot at Red Bank Battlefield, National Park, NJ. March 2020. Merril D. Smith
perhaps this is the dream?
Shadow-me drifts
moving with the river currents
fading with sun
and tides
the ebb and flow
of life–
sun and moon,
stars,
the planets
move through our skies.
Once they were gods
now only so in name,
but is their power and beauty decreased,
or only different?
[See this photo of Jupiter.]
News of my mom comes–
she is isolated,
as if in space–
my dead father comforts her,
and I see the heart weighs,
reflects
the upside-down
and the shadows,
feels the ebb and flow
and forgives.
Another puddle reflection, March 2020 Merril D. Smith
Like the rest of the world, we’re at home. We’re on Season 3 now of Babylon Berlin. We had a homemade pizza and movie night. We watched a new movie on Amazon Prime, Blow the Man Down. There’s a definite Coen Brothers vibe, complete with a Greek chorus of sea shanty-singing fishermen.
