To be pedestrian is to be
Profoundly intimate
With earth scent and grass sheen
And the sun’s light and weight
It’s scorched dust and brambles
And pebbles in the shoe,
And violets surprising
The near, perceptive view
Oh, wings are wildly lovely
In blue alluring sky,
But who, would like at standstill
Because he cannot fly?
-From In Green Pastures
Never return
To the towering hill,
The enormous river,
The mighty mill.
Whoever returns
Is apt to see
A dwindling homestead,
An outgrown tree.
But the love first given you,
The love first know,
Is always larger—
If you have grown.
-From Blessed Are You
In a certain sullen wall
That shuts the spacious world from view
Chance—or miracle—has made
A space for looking through:
A little blessed window space
Through which imprisoned eyes may see
An upward-going leafy road,
A tiny flowering tree;
And, growing close and pressing inward
Through the window in the wall,
Sprays of blossoms shaped to music,
White and sweet and small.
In whatever wall surround us,
Stubborn walls of grief or pain,
Barred by gates that will not open
While our lives remain,
God’s love is a window, showing
Us a wide and leafy land
And his mercy, bell-like, blossoms,
Sweetly close at hand.
1958, published in magazine (Saturday Evening Post?)
-republished in Blessed Are You