What is it when gratitude fails you and those elements of human experience which endeared you to humans makes scarce? What is this long farce anyhow but a continued need to apply kindness. And again.
Certainly, I adore the natural world. No question or confusion there. It lets me gaze long at it and I am not accused of staring. Rather, most of nature is indifferent to my existence yet I am adhered to it like sting to bee.
Tonight, a good night to read Stevie Smith and Philip Larkin and forget about the world I care too much for.
I share with you two poems found in an old Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume F which I've been indulging in of late.
I often wonder to myself which saves me more--books or trees? How awful and ironic that books are of trees. It makes me sad for trees sometimes and guilty for owning so much paper.
Perhaps I'd best just be grateful for both. And mindful of my purchases.
Not Waving but Drowning
by Stevie Smith
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith
And,
Talking in Bed
by Philip Larkin
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
Philip Larkin
And there truly is much I am grateful for such as: wellness in the time of pandemic un-wellness; the kindness of our vet to our rabbits and our family (once again); the general goodness of others; a sister's perfectly timed email of good cheer and this afternoon; a brilliant, long and near (binocular-less) sighting of a Savannah Sparrow with its lovely notched tail and a Great Blue Heron on the Wharf Road; and the calling, calling of a Willet in the intertidal pools and a Yellow Warbler in the roadside brush. And yesterday for the choral barking of many, many seals out off the southern shore at Waterside. Grateful too for Lucas' ability to discern bird calls and sightings with such ease, speed and accuracy. Sigh--such loveliness. And so much more. I guess gratitude has not failed me altogether. ;)
Cheers,
Be well,
Jill