Two Timely Poems

With gratitude to sister Janet who sent these earlier. The first by Saint Mary Oliver that reminds of the all important life lessons taught to us by the trees, ponds, and cattails, and the second a reminder to be engaged not only in hope and intention but in actual work done each day, each moment, with each breath.

May it be so…

In Blackwater Woods – Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its name is, is
nameless now.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this:
the fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.

To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:

To love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

***********************

What Have We Done Today? – Nixon Waterman

We shall do much in the years to come,

But what have we done today?

We shall give out gold in a princely sum,

                                     But what did we give today?

We shall lift the heart and dry the tear,

We shall plant hope in the place of fear,

We shall speak the words of love and cheer,

                                     But what did we speak today?

II

We shall be so kind in the after while,

But what have we been today?

We shall bring to each lonely life a smile,

                                    But what have we brought today?

We shall give to truth a grander birth,

And to steadfast faith a deeper worth,

We shall feed the hungering souls of earth,

                                    But whom have we fed today?

III

We shall reap such joys in the by and by,

                                    But what have we sown today?

We shall build us mansions in the sky,

                                    But what have we built today?

“Tis sweet in the idle dreams to bask;

But here and now, do we our task:

Yet, this is the thing our souls must ask,

                                    What have we done today?