The photo below was taken by Laura Erickson and is from the Crane Lake Nature blog
The year is at its end. Time is spent. Many things said and done; so much more that could only be felt. This week is the time-between-times, when the year turns bringing the solitude of winter months. Those are the days and hours of introspection and germination that bring a soul's desolation or brilliance. I am no great poet so at this low tide of season's change I will share with you the perfect words of another. God bless.
Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.
