Saturday, April 5, 2014

Meditations in Fast Times: 27. The children are swinging in the tree


Note to Readers: “Meditations in Fast Times” is a devotional writing experiment for the Season of Lent. Each day during the season, I am writing a poem as a meditation on, taking as my inspiration and intertextual basis, T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, as well as incorporating the daily office, current events, and other readings—some the same as those Eliot used while composing his seminal work and others.

                27.

The children are swinging in the tree;
they have been eating apples,
dropping seeds and cores everywhere
and laughing, l a u g h i n g!

Curious and playful,
the robin cocks a quizzical head,
as if to say,
what are they going to do next?

They jump down,
grasping at healing leaves as they go,
into the soft green grass
 then they see the bush.

Let’s play!
And they enter the ring of flame.
Ring, oh ring the roses!
Then strike some fancy poses!

Ask me, ask me;
I’ll make a claim!

And they run and run,
around and around,
until at last they collapse
in the shade of the tree,
laughing, l a u g h i n g!

And thus it has ever been
in the garden of delight,
as bird and tree would tell you,
if you could hear them.

They would also tell you,
laughing with mirth, l a u g h i n g!
We are all made for this,
and that’s the Absolute’s truth
.


 © 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

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