Trees know the meaning of happenstance. So does the sea and all that lives in her. As a girl swimming in a pond buzzing with horseflies, I felt a cool current slide over me, then pass on. This was the lesson, though I did not know it then. The harbor is not our permanent home. Think of love and its stages: rapture, the wound, then the final parting. Knowing from the start how it will end. We breathe into our cupped hands, hoping to keep it alive as long as we can. Among shouts of laughter the carousel slows its tune, then falls still, and a child returns from that world to this.
ReplyDeleteHAPPINESS AND HAPPENSTANCE SHARE THE SAME ROOT
Trees know the meaning of happenstance.
So does the sea and all that lives in her.
As a girl swimming in a pond buzzing
with horseflies, I felt a cool current
slide over me, then pass on. This
was the lesson, though I did not know it then.
The harbor is not our permanent home.
Think of love and its stages: rapture,
the wound, then the final parting.
Knowing from the start how it will end.
We breathe into our cupped hands, hoping
to keep it alive as long as we can.
Among shouts of laughter the carousel
slows its tune, then falls still, and a child
returns from that world to this.