All That You Want from This Day

On this lovely Easter morning, I am drinking good Sumatra decaf with a smidgen of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, and breakfasting on tamales as if I were in Santa Fe with thick adobe walls and turquoise doors.  I cleared the St. Francis water basin of the overgrown grasses, in hope of birds, but so far just one towhee has come by, hopping in and out of the washer & dryer alcove, looking for strands apparently for a nest.

I've found this perfect poem for the day, this little interval (and vast) to breathe in now and keep for life.  And then a memory of another day I've kept, a light-filled doorway in Treviso, in a centuries-old church.

I gather into a nest of my own these strands of then and now and yet to be—New Mexico and California, Italy and places still farther away that I will know only by rumor, reputation, coffee beans.  A nest in which to harbor new beginnings, new and better intentions, a hushed and holy way of starting and of going on.  A brave mixing of metaphors and images into a unique Christiesque whole.

Happy Easter, happy spring, happy remembering!

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life--

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

(William Stafford)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Treviso Church