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| 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
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| Thanks Hilary (and Tabor!) |
