I have been seeking a poem to help me sort out all that I saw and
experienced during my travels. You know…
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”
-Lewis Carroll
…which didn’t quite describe what I saw and loved. Or this…
“Tree, and tree-tufted hedge-row, and sparkling between
Dewy meadows enameled in gold and in green,
With king-cups and daisies which all the year please,”
-S.T. Coleridge
…which wasn’t nearly comprehensive enough (tho’ I shall use it for my hedgerow
post, you can be sure!). I turned, in the end, to Robert Louis Stevenson.
“The world is so full of a number of things,
I ’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
That will about cover it, and I can make up my own categories
….like “kitchens” and “cakes” and “hedgrows” and “garlands”.
It will do me good to write and share about it, for I have
still been languishing a bit, in this Virginian heat.
Just a few minutes ago, tho’, I took a quick walk
in the storm-lit dusk. The sky was a deep grey patchwork
of small clouds…I saw a bluebird fly out of the white house
on the fence-post, over our shaggy field of asters and Queen
Anne’s Lace…and a cool wind made the orange
day-lilies dance.
Perhaps, after all, there are a “number of things”
close to home to bring happiness. In fact, I am
sure of it.
