Man I am having a lousy day. It’s one of those days where the ghosts of the past and questions about the future crowd around me, and I feel confused and claustrophobic. I wish I hadn’t run this morning, because that’s probably what I need right now. That or a good nap, but the chances of sleep when my mind is racing like this are slim. We have some big decisions to make as a family, so that’s weighing on me, but more broadly my heart feels heavy today. Unsurprisingly, I am seeking solace in poetry. A few passages and brief extracts that sing to me today:

There Comes the Strangest Moment (Kate Light)

There comes the strangest moment in your life,
when everything you thought before breaks free –
what you relied upon, as ground-rule and as rite
looks upside down from how it used to be.
…
I want – my want. I love – my love. I’ll stay
with you. I thought transitions were the best,
but I want what’s here to never go away.
I’ll make my peace, my bed, and kiss this breast …

Your heart’s in retrograde. You simply have no choice.
Things people told you turn out to be true.
You have to hold that body, hear that voice.
You’ve have sworn no one knew you more than you.

How many people thought you’d never change?
But here you have. It’s beautiful. It’s strange.

The Sunlight on the Garden (Louise MacNeice)

The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold,
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

The Master Speed (Robert Frost) – for you, Hadley &John, Quincy & Dave

No speed of wind or water rushing by
But you have speed far greater. You can climb
Back up a stream of radiance to the sky,
And back through history up the stream of time.
And you were given this swiftness, not for haste
Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,
But in the rush of everything to waste,
That you may have the power of standing still –
Off any still or moving thing you say.
Two such as you with such a master speed
Cannot be parted nor be swept away
From one another once you are agreed
That life is only life forevermore
Together wing to wing and oar to oar.

The Peace of Wild Things (Wendell Berry)

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wild Geese (Mary Oliver)

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.