"in a dark time, the eye begins to see" Theodore Roethke

"You cannot get the news from poetry, but good people die every day for the lack of what is found there"

      Minor Ecstasies.

There have been countless minor ecstasies down the years:

Crape Myrtle flashing through the dark of a suburban February morning,

The smell of wet wood & seaweed at a ferry wharf,

The fragrance of sun-warmed honeysuckle on stone walls.

Now, when the walls of the world we have known seem to be tottering

Above our heads,

When bleak winds from a hidden future go howling past our naked ears,

When the familiar treasures that have kept our safe lives snug seem to be dimming & receding……………

Still a collection of minor ecstasies can be a source of joy; secret, inviolable, inexhaustible.

The time in which we live calls on us for great emotions; sorrow for all suffering people, as well as whatever tragedy & frustration we as individuals may have to meet.

It calls on us for vision & dedication, for sacrifice, for courage.

It calls on us also not to despise the day of small things.

Great moments we shall have, with their blinding light of revelation, but they will be comparatively rare.

There will be many more stretches of dimness & dusk when we plod along in faith & determination.

Minor ecstasies will light these grey stretches like faint but unmistakable stars if we but look for them.

The World in Tune.

Elizabeth Gray Vining.