Elizabeth Barrette
Hope is
folding paper cranes
even when your hands get cramped
and your eyes tired,
working past blisters and
paper cuts,
simply because something inside you
insists on
opening its wings.
________________
Wendell Berry
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
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.
________________
I am so tired of dealing with smallness. Of mind, of heart, of self. These poems help release me from that tight, sinking feeling I get when I'm unable to avoid absorbing the negativity and narrowness of others. They help me wrap it up and say, "I don't want this, you can have it back." After reading these poems, I am settled, and I remember that I can choose to paint my life with a broader, more joyful brush.
