April 24, 2010

William could have written this about the bluebonnets or the pretty orange flowers that grow or the dainty pink ones that we have in Minnesota too...

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Today I dropped my mother off at the airport after an eight day stay with me. Thank God she was here. Last Tuesday everything went to hell at work and I'm 10% the poorer financially and God only knows what percent emotionally. At least I still have my job. In between staff meetings and website planning sessions and performances of the play I directed and answering emails and teaching bible study and watching my boss angrily shake his head and wave me off when I started to pray in front of our Wednesday night group realizing only after I said, "Let's pray," that he had something to say to the group in response to our discussion, and I couldn't even think straight or pray properly wondering as I talked to God in front of those 60 people what I had said that had angered my boss and replaying the look he gave me in my head.

I suppose there's something wrong with me spiritually too?

I wander lonely as a cloud over the graveyard where I buried my friend, not quite my mother and not quite my grandmother, but somewhere in between. And I tell her goodbye and that I miss her and that I'm doing my best to keep her lonely husband company. And I cry in my dreams for her and wake up drenched in sweat and have to change my nightgown.

But the scattered flowers strewn across the land as I drove my mother to the airport where she would light into the air and leave me here alone and worried and poorer in so many ways, they are pretty, and natural and no one takes care of them. And I wonder who will take care of me now.

My inward eye fills with tears as it anxiously darts back and forth scanning my soul for some spark of life, some bluebird of happiness, or even a bluebonnet growing where the weed-filled grass has filled the meadow of my heart.

What is important? What can we cling to? How do we create community when we feel so lonely? If we can't take it with us, what do we do with our one wild and precious life now?

I wandered lonely as a cloud. Yes, William, you did. And now I am too...