I don't have a new section of The Evangeliad prepared to post this week, so instead I'm sharing extracts from an old poem, lightly edited and updated (in its original form, it was a poem desperately in need of a good editor, and while still on the long end, I think this version improves it somewhat).
Springtime in Eastern Maine
Think not on what you’d
have the weather be;
Rejoice in what it is.
But we have skies of
unrelenting gray, you say!
Yet are they not blankets
of life-giving dew
O’erwrapping
our rocky hideaway?—
Skies for which many a
land
Would
trade their cloudless azure domes,
Which
lift the spirit for a day,
Then render desolate what they have charmed.
But the rain is cold, you
say, and miserable!
And yet cold gray rain is
better matched
With
sipping tea, and playing piano,
And
writing poetry from inchoate thoughts
Than any other weather I know.
Our spring may not be
sublime, it’s true.
It’s rather more like
prayer than paradise:
Inviting
us to step out and breathe deep,
To
wait in grateful patience
Through
short, infrequent glimpses
Of
the blessings yet to come;
To build up perseverant
virtue
In
the crucible of time;
Learning to walk in step
with what is now
And
leaning hopeward
Toward what is yet to come.
The secret of spring is in
walking slow,
In
letting our world
Simply
be herself,
And
to learn her wiser ways.
We cannot forget to speak
our thanks
To
this slow and rugged corner of the earth,
And to love her for what
she is
And
for what she was made to be,
Rather than asking her to
be less
Than the glory Providence grants her.
So bring on the mud and
rain and gray-cast skies,
And teach me the grace,
As
Maine knows it,
Of
waking up slowly
And
breathing deep
Before paradise returns.
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