what I've learned from life, by Mary Elyn Bahlert
This morning, a walk up Mount Wanda,
summer brown – early this year.
Up the long path to the top –
A windmill, high and lonely,
Turns and listens
As the earth crunches beneath our feet,
and as we circle, again and again,
The azure sky draped overhead.
Here, tired from the climb, the trees our companions –
our lives have come to this! –
We stop! We breathe. —Mary Elyn Bahlert, 6/2021
Days before she died, Mom sat, legs over the side of her bed, gazing out the window onto the sunny street: "I wish it would snow once - just for me," she said.
I think that, too, sometimes.
There is a longing in this dry place:
when life is dry, empty.
I'd love to see the snow then,
flakes falling, silent, to the ground,
the heavens shaking their down pillows.
I'd like to be in that quiet place for a few moments,
surrender my busy mind to it,
welcome the holy silence, the emptiness -
all that space.
Mary Elyn Bahlert, February 27, 2022
TheWisdomYears.org 