This Morning

This photo is from last autumn. The female died and the male mourned alone all summer. Just a month ago a new female arrived on the pond. It was this new one I thought was icebound yesterday. The male hovered close for hours but late in the day the two of them had moved to the other side of the pond. Such a relief, such joy!

This Sunday's writing prompt was a quote from Leonard Cohen. We were to write a letter to him in response. Here's the quote and my letter.

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in ~ Leonard Cohen

Dear Mr. Cohen,

I’m sitting with these words of yours this morning, looking out my window to a landscape that is marked with stark and naked branches and drifts of crumpled leaves made restless by a cool wind. I was out there when the light got in, a mere lessening of the darkness at first and then a sudden rush of gold through a crack in the clouds that made my shadow stretch miraculously in front of me.

Dawn was, in a sense, a perfect offering, the opportunity for a whole new day, similar but unlike yesterday, a day when the swans I thought then to be icebound now floated free, their elongated necks entwined in an avian hug. I had no bell to ring but I did breathe a deep sigh made up of relief and pure joy and a kind of gratitude for all things wild.

I should probably come to the day with an offering – perhaps joy and gratitude and yes, relief that I did actually awaken, are not enough? I turn these thoughts over in my mind, looking for the cracks that will let the light in. I think often that I myself am cracked, flawed in a way that pushes light away. Your words make me wonder if I ought not fuss so much about those cracks, that they just might be a place where light not only gets in but rushes back out, flinging gold into dark places.

With gratitude then,

Pauline

Thanks Hilary (and Tabor!)