Ah, poetry

During the days when it seems as if I exist alone, I think of Emily Dickinson and her morbid fascination with death and its aftermath.  She gives her words the experience of birth and death as she deftly weaves them into succinct poetry.  The breath of life with the sorrow of living make up the mosaic of her mastery.

"HOPE" is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

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And as I remember that I'm not truly alone but just living as so for the moment, I look at a modern poet from my dear Kentucky.  Even if I cannot visit the "nature" he speaks of for solace, I read his words and I am there.  He comforts me.

The Peace of Wild Things, Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.