Fall/November

Night Thoughts

As the night wears on, I often become pensive and acutely aware of memories in my own life.
The stillness at the ending of the day is at work within, transporting me backward into a mood of reverie and contemplation. I see long-past days with that inward eye of solitude that harvests the lost joys and fading recollections of an earlier, happier time when the sun was much younger and the heart took fleeting things so much for granted.

These glimpses of the scenes we grew to love in retrospect seem to be transformed by some magical spell into the brightly-colored flowers of some secret garden that none but us can enter. I have heard that Gardens of Paradise are a recurrent image in the Gaelic tradition and in others as well. It seems as though the mind builds them to acknowledge the privileges of love and tends them through the persistence of memory. How does one's garden grow? Through tears and laughter and holy reverence for the days that are no more. Yes, there is a garden at the heart of things wished for and tenderly recalled.

And who are we to have these thoughts of sun-lit gardens still shining in our memories? Our secret selves attend them knowing that...

I am not I.
I am the one walking beside me whom I do not see,
visit often and at other times forget.
The one who remains silent when I talk,
forgives sweetly when I offend, shines brightly through my mist of foolish fears.
And with a grace that shatters time remains still standing when I die.