A helping hand

     With the coming of spring, it also seems that the mind renews as well.  Ideas left nebulous by the freezing cold, seeded deep in a mind more bent to carry on then to prosper, now take root.  Although no one knows when those notions may blossom, with the coming of spring the question is moot:  for all the answers we need become baldly apparent somewhere in between our nearest star, improbably giving us life, and the ground beneath us, impossibly giving rise to us and all we can perceive.  At this moment, words this world fails, so I must turn to another for help:

UNDER ONE SMALL STAR

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity.
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May the dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologize for my record of minutes to those who cry from the depths.
I apologize to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
Your gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
Forgive me even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.
My apologies to the great questions for small answers
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity, please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everything that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know I won’t be justified as long as I live,
Since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
Then labor heavily so that they may seem light.
                         -----  Wistawa Symborska


Enough said.