A TIME TO WAIT AND TRUST THE HOURS

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

With a corrupt and incompetent American president, a deadly pandemic that continues to ravage the country, and growing racial strife that often ends in violence, it is challenging to get through the days without falling into despair.  It helps, however, when I come across a fine piece of writing that captures my frustration and points to a way forward.  That was the case yesterday when I came across this Galway Kinnell poem in The Writer's Almanac.  I found the poem to be both wise and inspirational.  Perhaps it will resonate with others as well.

                                                                    Wait

                                                         by Galway Kinnell

                                Wait, for now.

                                Distrust everything if you have to.

                                But trust the hours.  Haven't they 

                                carried you everywhere, up to now?

                                Personal events will become interesting again.

                                Hair will become interesting.

                                Pain will become interesting.

                                Buds that open out of season will become interesting.

                                Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;

                                their memories are what give them

                                the need for other hands.  And the desolation

                                of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness

                                carved out of such tiny beings as we are

                                asks to be filled; the need

                                for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

                                Wait.

                                Don't go too early.

                                You're tired.  But everyone's tired.

                                But no one is tired enough.

                                Only wait a little and listen:

                                music of hair,

                                music of pain, 

                                music of looms weaving all our loves again.

                                Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,

                                most of all to hear

                                the flute of your whole existence,

                                rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.