Monday's Post: The Park

The Park

I run, run, run.

I slide and swing.

The park's more fun

Than any other thing.

     

                         Anne Knowles

To the Memory of Seamus Heaney

THE RAIN STICK

for Beth and Rand

BY SEAMUS HEANEY 

Upend the rain stick and what happens next

Is a music that you never would have known

To listen for.  In a cactus stalk

Downpour, sluice-rush, spillage and backwash

Come flowing through.  You stand there like a pipe

Being played by water, you shake it again lightly

And diminuendo runs through all its scales

Like a gutter stopping trickling.  And now here comes

A sprinkle of drops out of the freshened leaves,

Then subtle little wets off grass and daisies;

Then glitter-drizzle, almost-breaths of air.

Upend the stick again.  What happens next

Is undiminished for having happened once,

Twice, ten, a thousand times before.

Who cares if all the music that transpires

Is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?

You are like a rich man entering heaven

Through the ear of a raindrop.  Listen now again.

I celebrate the life of Seamus Heaney, a sublime human being and poet.  It was a joy to be alive at a time when he was writing.  Let's celebrate our own lives.  "Who cares if all the music that transpires is the fall of grit or dry seeds through a cactus?"  Each one of our lives is undiminished for having been only one of many billions of lives on earth.  Despite the grit and dirt, let's look at our lives and the lives of others and listen for the music.  That is a fitting tribute.  "Listen now again."