A Tree is Truer for Being Bare
January 5, 2013
Frosty benches at Green Lake
“With frost again the thought is clear and wise
that rain made dismal with a mist’s despair,
the raw bleak earth beneath cloud-narrowed skies
finds new horizons in the naked air.
Light leaps along the lashes of the eyes;
a tree is truer for its being bare.
“So must the world seem keen and very bright
to one whose gaze is on the end of things,
who knows, past summer lush, brimmed autumn’s height,
no promise in the inevitable springs,
all stripped of shadow down to the bone of light,
the false songs gone and gone the restless wings.”
— John Hewitt, from The Poems of John Hewitt
— John Hewitt, from The Poems of John Hewitt
from the blog Ancedotal Evidence
Rosemary's Blog 
January 5, 2013 at 7:26 am
I accidentally hit “Publish” before I finished this post, so it will live on as is. I’m bumbling around with a new piece of technology, an iPad, and I’m still learning how to navigate and make things work the way I’d like. Hit the wrong thing, and oops, too late, you’ve just sent something off in a less-than-perfect state!
January 5, 2013 at 1:05 pm
Beautiful!
January 5, 2013 at 2:42 pm
poetic justice that your post in turn – is truer for being bare. (You could only have added, not taken away?)
January 5, 2013 at 6:23 pm
I think you’re right, much to my chagrin!
January 6, 2013 at 1:23 pm
(that was not in any way a criticism! Much like knowing when to stop working on a watercolour painting …)
January 6, 2013 at 2:16 pm
I know exactly what you mean! “In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away . . .” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand, and Stars.