[Camino Poem No. 8] Song

some days, you rise early, head down, get where you need to be.
other days, tasted breakfast, noticed dawn, playing with poems
as pilgrims beat past.

i love this poem,
this song.

say it out loud
and see if you don't
merge to gold
again

it says, be slow.
be with these steps,
and see the beauty beyond beauty
that lies all around,
in the golden fields
of fresh cut wheat,
and especially in those human faces.

oh, to live it
in my spine!

(picked by Karen, who was travelling with two Dominican Sisters - Susanna and Clare - more on them later!)

Song – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961)

You are as gold

as the half-ripe grain

that merges to gold again,

as white as the white rain

that beats through

the half-opened flowers

of the great flower tufts

thick on the black limbs

of an Illyrian apple bough.

Can honey distill such fragrance

As your bright hair

For your face is as fair as rain,

yet as rain that lies clear

on white honey-comb,

lends radiance to the white wax,

so your hair on your brow

casts light for a shadow.