Tuesday, February 16, 2016

A Long Ten Days



It's been a very long ten days.  February seems longer than usual, due in part to the miserable weather ( today we have snow/sleet/ black ice/ rising temperatures/rain/fog)  but due also to my worrying about my university.  The conflicts over our new president escalated , to put it mildly.  I don't feel like telling the story here.  Suffice it to say that we aired our dirty laundry in the press, and much angry response has appeared in the comments section of every news article and on Facebook and Twitter.  I have said many rosaries, since that prayer is one I am able to say when I am distressed and distracted. I have faith that something good will come from this debacle... eventually.

Enough of that.

Here's a wonderful poem by Jane Hirschfield that Garrison Keillor read on "The Writer's Almanac" yesterday morning:



Hope and Love
 
by Jane Hirschfield

 
All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the custom of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark,
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.
 
 

"Hope and Love" by Jane Hirshfield from The Lives of the Heart. © Harper Perennial, 1997. Reprinted with permission.
 
 

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