We’re excited for snow to come and the Catskills unfold into their deep winter beauty. But our longing for summer is never far behind. This is a lovely moment at the Spillian pond with hermit thrushes last summer, caught by a guest.
As you watch and listen, we’d love to share these words with you – a favorite poem from Nobel Poet Laureate, Derek Walcott:
Love After Love
by Derek Wolcott
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
My thanks to Spillian Fellow Steve Burnett for reminding me of this poem today. I studied with Derek Walcott years ago and this has long been a favorite poem. So wonderful to have to rise to the surface of my ill-regulated consciousness today so I could share it with you!
Happy new year. May this one be gloriously beyond what you could imagine.
— Leigh
