(Skip Dickstein / Times Union file photo)
What the Day Gives
By Jeanne Lohmann (1923–2016)
Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder
in the middle of gray November
what I hoped to do comes back,
asking.
Across the street the fiery trees
hold onto their leaves,
red and gold in the final months
of this unfinished year,
they offer blazing riddles.
In the frozen fields of my life
there are no shortcuts to spring,
but stories of great birds in migration
carrying small ones on their backs,
predators flying next to warblers
they would, in a different season, eat.
Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world
that plunges in a single day from despair
to hope and back again, I commend my life
to Ruskin’s difficult duty of delight,
and to that most beautiful form of courage,
to be happy.
From The Light of Invisible Bodies: Poems. Jeanne Lohmann was a Quaker poet who published more than 10 volumes of poetry and was featured in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. Her poetry collections are available at the local, independent Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza.