THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE
One without looks in to-night
…Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white,
One without looks in to-night
…As we sit and think
…By the fender-brink.
We do not discern those eyes
…Watching in the snow,
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
…Wondering, aglow,
…Fourfooted, tiptoe.
-Thomas Hardy
On this day ten years ago I did not post anything about St. Nicholas, whose feast day it was and is. Just now I was checking back through the years to find out what I’ve already said about the God-loving man who is so dear to people all over the world, when I discovered this post from ten years ago, at the time my new garden was pretty much installed (the back part of the property). If I didn’t have pictures like the one below, I would not believe how fast a garden can happen. The fountain shown did not remain long, because it exfoliated in its first winter and was returned to the nursery where I’d bought it.
The most enjoyable posts here over the years on St. Nicholas Day seem to me these two: One when I traveled to a parish of which he is the patron saint, and one in which I have a lovely icon and the quote from Fr. Thomas Hopko in honor of him. So if you’d like to read about St. Nicholas or his feast you can click on those links. One of the posts includes this photo:
2025 is another year in which I won’t be celebrating with our sister parish on their feast day, because I am not completely well from a cold that knocked me down a bit, and I’m catching up on rest and everything else that didn’t happen for a few days. But it doesn’t feel right to let the day pass without joining in the commemoration at some level.
I’m sure that after Divine Liturgy for the feast, everyone at St. Nicholas parish will be singing this song at their festal meal. It is playing in my mind right now:
Though they are singing in a different language, Old Church Slavonic or Russian, I like the rendition of these men the best: “O Who Loves Nicholas the Saintly.”
I pray that the joy of St. Nicholas reaches you wherever you are.
The last lines of this poem rescue it for me, out of a feeling of chaos and loss. The moon is a real thing, unlike the many insubstantial facts that we might forget. In this case it’s also an experience in the moment, of heartfelt beauty, good for centering the soul.
FORGETFULNESS
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
-Billy Collins
PERSONAL
Don’t take it personal, they said; but I did, I took it all quite personal —
the breeze and the river and the color of the fields; the price of grapefruit and stamps,
the wet hair of women in the rain — And I cursed what hurt me
and I praised what gave me joy, the most simple-minded of possible responses.
The government reminded me of my father, with its deafness and its laws,
and the weather reminded me of my mom, with her tropical squalls.
Enjoy it while you can, they said of Happiness Think first, they said of Talk
Get over it, they said at the School of Broken Hearts
but I couldn’t and I didn’t and I don’t believe in the clean break;
I believe in the compound fracture served with a sauce of dirty regret,
I believe in saying it all and taking it all back
and saying it again for good measure while the air fills up with I’m-Sorries
like wheeling birds and the trees look seasick in the wind.
Oh life! Can you blame me for making a scene?
You were that yellow caboose, the moon disappearing over a ridge of cloud.
I was the dog, chained in some fool’s backyard; barking and barking:
trying to convince everything else to take it personal too.
-Tony Hoagland
Gladsome Lights 