A half foggy morning, the half that is further away from the window. Close to the window the yard appears still and quiet, only the tick of falling leaves and the rumble of a passing truck break the heavy silence. The air hangs on every branch as if waiting for something momentous to happen, the branches bend with the weight of it. Across the road in the park, the fog erases all but the darkest trees, milky light eases between dark leaves and sharp needles, caught like ten thousand spider webs woven during the night. The cane bends and looks limp this morning, silver moisture rolling down each leaf until they droop with it, the drops collecting beneath it changing the ground to an absorbing shadow.
Since I was not here yesterday, had gone to see Winonah and take part in a celebration of her baby, Claire, due next month, I am going to do the blessing today! It's odd to know the baby's name and all ahead of time, but very handy, a new life to share in, to bless our family.
A List of Praises
Give praise with psalms that tell the trees to sing,
Give praise with Gospel choirs in storefront churches,
Mad with the joy of the Sabbath,
Give praise with the babble of infants, who wake with the sun,
Give praise with children chanting their skip-rope rhymes,
A poetry not in books, a vagrant mischievous poetry
living wild on the Streets through generations of children.
Give praise with the sound of the milk-train far away
With its mutter of wheels and long-drawn-out sweet whistle
As it speeds through the fields of sleep at three in the morning,
Give praise with the immense and peaceful sigh
Of the wind in the pinewoods,
At night give praise with starry silences.
Give praise with the skirling of seagulls
And the rattle and flap of sails
And gongs of buoys rocked by the sea-swell
Out in the shipping-lanes beyond the harbor.
Give praise with the humpback whales,
Huge in the ocean they sing to one another.
Give praise with the rasp and sizzle of crickets, katydids and cicadas,
Give praise with hum of bees,
Give praise with the little peepers who live near water.
When they fill the marsh with a shimmer of bell-like cries
We know that the winter is over.
Give praise with mockingbirds, day's nightingales.
Hour by hour they sing in the crepe myrtle
And glossy tulip trees
On quiet side streets in southern towns.
Give praise with the rippling speech
Of the eider-duck and her ducklings
As they paddle their way downstream
In the red-gold morning
On Restiguche, their cold river,
Salmon river,
Wilderness river.
Give praise with the whitethroat sparrow.
Far, far from the cities,
Far even from the towns,
With piercing innocence
He sings in the spruce-tree tops,
Always four notes
And four notes only.
Give praise with water,
With storms of rain and thunder
And the small rains that sparkle as they dry,
And the faint floating ocean roar
That fills the seaside villages,
And the clear brooks that travel down the mountains
And with this poem, a leaf on the vast flood,
And with the angels in that other country.
Anne Porter
Now it seems the birds are giving praise as well, they just started singing, one calling "Sweety, sweety, sweety!" And one the familiar, "Cheater, cheater, cheater!" I think I will take the "sweety" and brush off the "cheater". A mocking bird is making a long complicated run of song, and now I can hear the black voices of crows in the distance. Kind of strange that they should all start making their voice heard at once, and in the background the song of a jet overhead, like a long continuo of sound underwriting the birds. There seems to be a lot to praise right here where we are, as the seasons turn in one long celebration of fulfillment, moving on to the quiet rest of winter. Here it's again more like spring than fall, but more and more the trees know the season, brown and yellow rippling out and touching most of the trees.
Today give praise right where you are, in the particulars that are your morning, your day, like the poet recounting her particular blessings, we all have our own to praise!
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