A Winter’s Day

I discovered a new (to me) poet in a Krista TIppett, On Being interview: Jane Hirshfield:The Fullness of Things.

After I read some of Jane Hirshfield’s poems I decided to take my walk along frozen Medicine Lake today, wanting to create photos that captured a bit of how the poems made me feel, full of beauty, sorrow, acceptance, regret, and only a tiny smidgen of hope for the future.

While on my walk I remembered a line from an old Simon and Garfunkle song…

A Winter’s Day

in a deep and dark December (from the song, I Am a Rock).

It’s not December but it did feel deep and dark to me today as I walked. The sky was gray, the snow white. There was very little color in the landscape. I felt a chill damp wind biting through my winter clothing, even though the thermometer said it was almost 32 degrees outside.

Still I found beauty in the stark landscape. Sometimes beauty is tinged with truth, sorrow, longing, and regret. Today’s beauty felt that way to me.

Let Them Not Say

Let them not say: we did not see it.

We saw.

 

Let them not say: we did not hear it.

We heard.

 

Let them not say: they did not taste it.

We ate, we trembled.

 

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.

We spoke,

we witnessed with voices and hands.

 

Let them not say: they did nothing.

We did not-enough.

 

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.

It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,

read by its light, praised,

and it burned.

   — Jane Hirshfield

Broken Beauty

You may find Jane Hirshfield’s poems depressing. But for me they ring with truth. And isn’t it refreshing sometimes to hear the truth, no matter how painful? To see and feel the full catastrophe of life, and still be able to write beautiful poems, that is a gift. Joy is not always full of laughter. Sometimes it is filled with tears of recognition and sorrow for humanity’s limitations, folly, and hubris.

But I will take a full true joy any day over false promises and denial. The infinite is woven into each moment, sacred and profane. And beauty weaves through the landscapes of our lives, hiding in plain sight, even on a winter’s day.

The Weighing

The heart’s reasons

seen clearly,

even the hardest

will carry

its whip-marks and sadness

and must be forgiven.

 

As the drought-starved

eland forgives

the drought-starved lion

who finally takes her,

enters willingly then

the life she cannot refuse,

and is lion, is fed,

and does not remember the other.

 

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

 

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

— Jane Hirshfield

My friends, may you see and experience the infinite today and always, even in the midst of all of our folly. May you find hidden beauty and joy, even in your sorrow.

May you walk in beauty.