Sunday, November 7, 2021

Sunset

I was at the kitchen sink this evening and glanced out the window to see the last light of the evening through the trees and the sliver of the moon between the branches. Of course I couldn't capture the colors or the moon in a photo, but the image has stayed with me ~ trees so dark only the outline of the highest branches shows against the gray-blue sky atop a glowing horizon ~ not all can be seen but what I know from before is that it's there and I will see it again...though it may be changed and not as I remember. 

The book I pulled from the shelf opened to the perfect poem ~ 

 For the Interim Time

by John O'Donohue

When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,

No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.

In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems TO believe the relief of dark.

You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.

The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.

"The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born."

You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.

Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.

As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow your confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.

What is being transfigured here is your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.

(From To Bless the Space Between Us, Doubleday, 2008, p. 119-20)

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