comes quiet stirring
a vast pulsating music
the Sun delivered
There is a neighborhood where we like to walk near our house where this group of about a half dozen families like to decorate their homes for Halloween and Christmas.
Most years it seems to be a benign competition.
This year, somehow, someway, the families involved got together and coordinated their efforts.
Each house went all out as usual.
Decorating starts before Thanksgiving and by the long weekend giving thanks, that end of the street glows.
I cannot imagine how many hours and dollars are invested in these displays.
The amount of time alone needed to put it all together would stop me from even thinking of entering the competition of individual home decoration.
Then, to show their bond of community they turned the sidewalk that spans this group of houses into one long tunnel of light.
Every 10 feet or so of sidewalk has a 7 foot high hoop of PCP pipe that is wrapped in lights.
Each hoop is connected with extension cords to the next hoop.
You can walk the length the block under an arbor of Christmas lights.
Don’t get me wrong.
It is impossible to walk down this sidewalk, under the lights, and not feel better, a little happier for doing it, for being there.
You can’t look at this lights from across the pond, with the water reflecting the lights, and not feel better, a little happier for doing it, for being there.
I cannot imagine the time and human effort that its required to put on such a show.
As I drove to work this morning the sun was about to come up out of the Atlantic Ocean.
Far into the vast the mist grows dim,
A deep and holy silence broods around,
Fire burns beyond the vaporous rim,
And crystal-like the dew bestrews the ground.
The last laggard star has fled the glowing sky,
Comes a quiet stirring and a gentle light,
A vast pulsating music, throbbing harmony,
Beyond the Sun delivered from the gloom of night!*
No human effort required.
No extension cords.
No PCP pipe.
The earth revolves daily and somewhere in the world, the Sun is coming up.
You feel better, a little happier for seeing it, for being there.
*The poem is Dawn by WH Auden.
No Haiku For You 