All of us deal with depressing experiences and feelings from time to time. Living into the life-cycle that the poem takes us through takes patience. And courage. And trust.
Mindfulness and contemplative prayer gently and persistently train us in these 'virtues.'
Our tendency is too often to read a poem like this once, twice or three times and enjoy the momentary buzz we get from it. This is not enough.
If the poem speaks to us, and if we sense it might bring us more deeply into the living cycle that the poet lives and describes, we must sync our cycle, challenging as it is to do, with the snowdrop.
--
Snowdrops~Louise
Gluck
Do
you know what I was, how I lived? You
know
what
despair is; then
winter
should have meaning for you.
I
did not expect to survive,
earth
suppressing me. I didn't expect
to
waken again, to feel
in
damp earth my body
able
to respond again, remembering
after
so long how to open again
in
the cold light
of
earliest spring-
afraid,
yes, but among you again
crying
yes risk joy
in
the raw wind of the new world.
