Happy New Year

I got back into Sydney a couple of hours ago. Virgin actually rescheduled my flight, so I was earlier than planned, but not so early that I was enthused about frocking up and detouring around road and bridge closures to get to either of the parties I had an invitation to (and after non-stop people for the last ten days, I am enjoying a little time to reflect and find that space in my head), so I am seeing 2013 in quietly. But I thought I would post a poem to see in the new year from one of my Christmas presents, A Thousand Mornings, by Mary Oliver.

Painting by Laura Tovar Dietrick.

Hurricane

It didn’t behave

like anything you had

ever imagined. The wind

tore at the trees, the rain

fell for days slant and hard.

The back of the hand

to everything. I watched

the trees bow and their leaves fall

and crawl back into the earth.

As though, that was that.

This was one hurricane

I lived through, the other one

was of a different sort, and

lasted longer. Then

I felt my own leaves giving up and

falling. The back of the hand to

everything. But listen now to what happened

to the actual trees;

toward the end of that summer they

pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.

It was the wrong season, yes,

but they couldn’t stop. They

looked like telegraph poles and didn’t

care. And after the leaves came

blossoms. For some things

there are no wrong seasons.

Which is what I dream of for me.