Poetry Please: Lingering In Happiness

A beautiful poem, about nature, by my favourite poet

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Another week, another storm. It’s a little unnerving sleeping in the boat whilst the wind pulls us to and fro. If you’ve not been inside one, being on a canal boat is slightly less “rocky” than you might imagine it to be. There are no waves outside to bob us up and down and unless our water tank is empty, or there are one too many adults standing on one side of the boat, it’s relatively still.

However, yet another storm arrived over the weekend and we found ourselves experiencing the increasingly familiar feeling of being pulled and pushed around by the wind. It howled through the boat finding the air gaps around our slightly misfitting doors with ease as the rain lashed against our steel roof. Our allotment greenhouse has lost a few panes and the village is littered with branches and remnants of two trees that fell.

These storms are quite humbling and makes you suddenly realise just who’s really in charge here.

As our last poem inspired by a storm was about wind, today’s poem is inspired by the rain and by one of my favourite poets who we have featured before. The magnificent Mary Oliver with some gentle words reminding us that everything in this world shares a natural connection.

After rain after many days without rain.
it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees,
and the dampness there, married now to gravity,
falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground

where it will disappear--but not, of course, vanish
except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share,
and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss;
a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel;

and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years,
will feel themselves being touched.

- Lingering In Happiness, Mary Oliver

How was the storm where you are? Hopefully there wasn’t too much damage around you!

Thanks for reading this week’s poem. Please do read it aloud - it’s meant to be great for our wellbeing :)

Until next time,

Jack x