Walk Before Rain

Looking at today’s weather forecast I decided that if I wanted to take a walk today I’d better take it this morning.

Walk Before Rain

I was right. As I returned home after a wander in our backyard and around a nearby path in the neighborhood, raindrops had just begun to fall.

I found lavender crocus flower buds in the side yard where I always find them in the spring. They are just buds; none of them have begun to open yet.

As I sat down to write, just now, a flock of gold finches arrived at my bird feeders. I count six bright yellow males and as many female finches, all jostling for a place at the feeders. The leafless hydrangea bush outside my window is decorated with bright yellow birds!

Here is a poem that felt right for the day today. I hope you enjoy it.

The Bowl

If meat is put into the bowl, meat is eaten.

If rice is put into the bowl, it may be cooked.

If a shoe is put into the bowl,

the leather is chewed and chewed over,

a sentence that cannot be taken in or forgotten.

A day, if a day could feel, must feel like a bowl.

Wars, loves, trucks, betrayals, kindness,

it eats them.

Then the next day comes, spotless and hungry.

The bowl cannot be thrown away.

It cannot be broken.

It is calm, uneclipsable, rindless,

and, big though it seems, fits exactly in two human hands.

Hands with ten fingers,

fifty-four bones,

capacities strange to us almost past measure.

Scented—as the curve of the bowl is—

with cardamom, star anise, long pepper, cinnamon, hyssop.

— Jane Hirshfield

May you walk in beauty.