Late Prayer by Jane Hirshfield

My bird feeder holding a Passionflower & Dragon Wing Begonia's flowers---

 

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Late Prayer

By Jane Hirshfield

 

Tenderness does not choose its own uses.

It goes out to everything equally,

circling rabbit and hawk.

Look: in the iron bucket,

a single nail, a single ruby -

all the heavens and hells.

They rattle in the heart and make one sound.

 

 

from:  "Nine Gates - Entering the Mind of Poetry - Essays by Jane Hirshfield", page 211

 

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A beautiful, soul-searing book.

 

 

Hearing the cuckoo,

even in Kyoto

I long for Kyoto.    ~Basho

 

 

I post my favorite haiku by Basho on this rainy, stormy Saturday in which my oldest grandson is on his way to his first year of college two hours away.  I have two daughters and he was born when I was in my early 40's, so it was like having the little boy I never had.  Oh, the fun we had!  I can't count the number of times we went to the zoo and the book store---his favorite two places.  He still loves the book store, but not the zoo quite as much.  :-)  He taught me how to be a grammy and I taught him how to see (a little bit, I hope).  I asked him the other day what he looked forward to most about college (expecting something about girls, freedom, etc.), and he said, "I'm eager to get back to school to learn more stuff."  Yes, he's my boy. 

 

"Even in Kyoto, I long for Kyoto......."  Indeed.

 

xo,

Marion

 

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"Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild." ~Welsh Proverb

 

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"Grandchildren are God’s way of compensating us for growing old." ~Mary H. Waldrip

 

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Taylor & April at college.  (He's 6'1"...he got my long legs.)

 

 

A Morning Glory heart-leaf...