Easter 2013: Tallis Canon

All praise to Thee.

I am so thick with memories. It is as if
I'd never washed at all -

the mud and wet hay,
that soft fur, the kid goat's muzzle,
the gray bare trees
and cerulean sky.

Ducks guzzling in puddles,
chickens squawking,
the cow chewing stolidly,
the white mother nanny
hard and disinterested.

What happens when we grow -
do we blink in the light,
shy away, then go
and find the world too small?

Or can we somehow enter again
our mother, choose from the beginning
to give all burstingly?

To wait for months underground
and wake as freshly,
undaunted, lean and fasted,
singing greenly
what we lived for in our first undoing.

I am finding
it was safe under snow and
Almighty wings.






"All praise to Thee" and "Almighty wings" taken from the Thomas Tallis canon.