Forest area and prairie at Cooper Mountain Nature Park, Oregon: photo by Aboutmovies, 2009
Presence comes before everything, even before being
The you to whom everything once belonged
If by everything one means the fullness of nature's beauty
You must remember now that much has been taken from you
Grief too will go from you as from sorrowing songs
Sorrow goes, leaving nothing for you after a while
But the memory of the melody, some old familiar tune
That's lingered on long past the moment you first sailed
Gracefully into the room, as if all the modern languages
Were coming down to me so that I could say these things
Ercall Wood Nature Reserve, near Arleston, Telford And Wrekin, Great Britain: photo by Bob Bowyer, 2003
Moore Nature Reserve, England: photo by andy, 2005
6 comments:
Beautiful, beautiful piece, Tom. And the reminder, in the spirit of the East, that the grief, too, will go.
Wonderful pics ...
Don
Thank you very much, friend Don. We both appreciate the old tunes.
I love the Aquinas here...the fullness of 'being' that welcomes in presence as its first guest.
Conrad,
That generous thought is gratefully received.
Brilliant Tom. The clarity and acceptance reassures me that my faith in "art" and "nature" is sometimes rewarded with beauty and understanding beyond even what I am lucky enough to discover in the daily familiarities of my life. That almost sounds pretentious but just trying to be precise.
Thank you, Michael. In the grateful silence that echoes around those words at this end, one could hear a pin drop. (If the old brokendown Mexican refrigerator weren't humming like an antiquated DC-3 hesitantly warming up for takeoff, that is.)
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