When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
~ William Wordsworth, The Prelude IV 354
Sometimes a person wakes
believing they are a storm.
It is hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That's the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.
believing they are a storm.
It is hard to deny it, what,
with all the rain pouring out
of the gutters of the mind,
all the gusts blowing through,
all the squalls, all the gray.
But by afternoon, it seems obvious
they are a garden about to sprout.
By night, it is clear they are a moon—
luminous, radiant, faithful.
That's the danger, I suppose,
of believing any frame.
Let me believe, then, in curiosity,
in wonder, in change.
Let me trust how essential it is
to stumble into the trough
of the unknown, marvel how
trough becomes wings becomes
faith becomes math. Let me trust
uncertainty is a sacred path.