Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Waking up to contrast

I woke to another glorious sunny day behind the blind

waking up

And the first pictures that caught my eye on Twitter were these..

1/  Moonrise from the International Space Station

moonrise from the ISS

 

2/  My family leaving their home in San Francisco to live in Boulder, Colorado

my famiky leaving sf

 

3/  A family fleeing their home in Gaza to escape Israeli bombing:

family fleeing airstrikes in gaza

And my immediate reaction is despair that there is nothing I can do to stop the suffering, here and everywhere.

But I don’t think the answer is not to enjoy the sunny day I have been given. I came across a poem by Jack Gilbert lately called A Brief for the Defence. Here is an extract:

extract from A brief for the defence

So I have been out picking strawberries in my pyjamas, cut back some seeding Lady’s Mantle with my sharp new pruning sheers (Oh joy! – I love those sheers that a Twitter friend recommended to me) and I’ve worked out where I’m going to store the huge heap of kindling that Dave has piled high in the wheelbarrow. He is always commandeering the wheelbarrow when I need it for gardening (bless his little cotton socks.) Now I shall take my morning shower.

I hope you enjoy your day, too.

2 comments:

marmee said...

hello! Nice to see you are back....and thanks for the poem. Listen, I grew up in apartheid South Africa. I am white and by the time my children were teenagers understood the evil of the politics of my race and culture. I can recall being in a darkened theatre and listening to the names of activists who had been killed that year being read out and then that lovely song Asimbonanga was sung. It refers to Mandela and means : we do not see him. Mr Mandela was still on Robben Island...I remarked that I wished it was all done and that he was our president and my husband said: In our lifetime? But it happened ....we have to hold the faith for Palestine and their liberation and for Israel and their receiving some insight, some wisdom, some sense of right.

Sue Hepworth said...

Hi Marmee! Thank you for your comment. You're right, and your story is very interesting. We must hold the faith for Palestine and their liberation, and for Israel in a different way.