-- In Place of Paradise --
John Herlihy
In place of Paradise,
One’s own paradise.
Silence instead of word,
Dawn chirping of a bird.
A bumble bee hums,
As the silence drums.
Cold rivers melt snow,
Cloud-hidden peaks know.
In grasslands, sheep graze,
Into the lake’s mind, stars gaze.
Heaven’s border distant,
Clear sky overhead, insistent.
My desires, dreams, original,
The North Star aboriginal.
The egret lifts into moonlight,
The darkness offers midnight.
A full moon fills a window,
Passing clouds shed falling snow.
Myths and stars the night succumb,
A cleaned gate marks welcome.
Wind fills the idle sail,
Hush tempers the wild gale.
My life’s solitary thread of one,
There in the tapestry of life spun.
- - - - - -
(c) John Herlihy 7 June 2020
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There in the tapestry of life spun.
This passage reminded me of a story I once heard about a woman who looked out upon her life and saw chaos. All of her experiences, all that she was, were but a jumble of discordant threads. Yet, when she died she was able to look back upon her life and see that all those threads had, in fact, created a beautiful tapestry.
Rebecca