A Poem For Your Monday

Nov 5, 2012

after the storm3

I watched these old, old maples bend in the wind of that hurricane. Because they yielded, they are still standing.

That is how I want to live. I am more and more sure that art and beauty and love grow best not by raging against the wind (or the storm, the dark day, the hard, unasked-for circumstance). They come through yielding.

To yield is not to give up. It is not throwing up my hands in defeat. This yielding is more like being carried. It is moving with what moves and watching – always watching – for the One who does the moving.

And then singing of what I see.

 

                    Vow

The need to work this land to fit my wants

I yield. I vow no more to walk with plans

like gossip falling from my mouth. I choose

to go in silence, learning, in my sure

refusal, the truth that yields to yielding.

 

At Equinox, before the flood of light

sets water loose, I covenant to give

the downward rush beneath the grass its head.

I’ll dam no stream. I’ll dig no pond. Nor will

I plant willows to suck the wet spots dry.

 

My work shall be to say the nature

of Creation’s slow unfolding, to name what

becoming new has always been, to praise

what lives without my praise unto itself.

–     John Leax

 

 

2 Comments

  1. Myrna Purifoy

    Delightful! This is one of my favorites, Christie. Your message is truly profound, yet your writing is easy to follow. In fact, it is like a melody can be heard as I read it. Leax’s poem is delightful, too.

    Reply

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