All the loveliness

Chance drew me outside this morning shortly after the rain spent itself.  I had purchased new plants to stage on my garden trellis.  My friend Dani would come, later, and pot them for me while I stood by and endeavored not to get in her way.  But an inexplicable desperate insistence  urged me into a wool sweater and through the open door before my second cup of coffee.

Eventually, I staged the project for her deft ministrations.  But first, I held my breath, reached for my camera, and captured an astonishing sight.  Too far from the water, an egret perched on a branch high over our meadow.  To see such splendor, I gladly stood in the morning chill, my coat not yet buttoned, my hands reddening from the last sting of the night’s biting wind.  A cloudless sky rose above the towering tree.  Eventually, the bird would take flight and with any sort of luck, find its way back to the marshy banks and the drifting clouds of hyacinth just beginning to bloom out on the river.   

Far below the lofty path of that majestic being, I went about my humdrum morning.  But you can be sure  I kept the loveliness of that egret with me for every hour of this cold March Sunday.

It’s the fifth day of the one hundred and eleventh month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

Barter, by Sara Teasdale

Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder like a cup.

Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.

Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

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