The Gift of a Morning
I thought Cookie
was being stubborn, contrary,
when she wandered away
into the overgrown garden
sauntering at her own pace beneath the stems
of fallen burdock and grasses
and through the forest
of tall goldenrod and burdock
where I couldn’t follow.
She sat calmly among grasses and blooming beggar’s ticks
and when I arrived at her side, irritated,
skirt prickly with stickseed and burdock pods.
I reached to pick her up, bad girl,
and turned to see what she studied,
and saw my garden awash with sun
majestic tufts of goldenrod backlit by beams of light
humming with hungry bees finding
the sweetest autumn nectar for their final meal,
white poofs of sow thistle holy in their radiance,
and the first calico asters, my favorite
dappled with passing drops of sun
against the backdrop of dark silhouetted trees;
so much to love in a sweet autumn morning
so much I would have missed.
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“. . . skirt prickly with stickseed and burdock pods.”
I love that line. My tongue wants to dance to it.
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This is lovely, Bernadette. What a picture it evokes — one that the reader can just about walk right into.
Thanks to Cookie, I didn’t miss the beauty, or the inspiration I carried all day.
Lovely, thanks for sharing your poem.
C, thanks for visiting.
Love Nekoka’s photo today–finally found the e-mail sign-up key on your blog!
Beautiful! Yet another example of why we need to slow down and listen to our cats.
Ingrid, it was truly one of those magic moments.
Brilliant! Cats have much to teach us. I always feel autumn lends itself to poetry so well. After all it’s the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.
Ahhh…Keats. Truly in autumn I turn to those mid-century romantics–I can tell you that all those famous lines were in my head yesterday morning, along with Shakespeare barely a century before, “That time of year thou may’st in me behold/when yellow leaves or few do hang/upon those boughs…”
Ah, good kitty. 🙂 Sweet poem. 🙂
Katie, how could I complain when she leads me to such beauty? If I’d had time last night I would have posted some of the photos in a little slideshow, but I think I’ll still do one and add it to this post. I’ll also be posting them on my photo blog.
Awwwwwww, the poetry that is to be discovered in a
morning garden.
Denise, I wish I could spend all day at it, like one of those 18th-century romantic poets! Think of Yeats and his “bee-loud glade”…