A Deep River Year - 2017

I awakened to the patter of rain on the window, a soft shower that followed me through my early morning walk. The world seems unusually green on a gray day, and the leaves on the burgeoning trees glisten in the morning light. I am glad to be alive, smelling the wet earth. But these inclement days sometimes have another effect. For some of us, this weather is soporific. The rhythm of the raindrops and the dim light make us want to find a comfortable place to sit, or even lie down, and drift into dreams. For others, these days are depressing, hanging like a storm cloud over lives that are shadowed by troubles, loneliness, or fear.


A friend recently told me about his wife, a kind and good woman suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. She is in the stage of dementia in which she is aware of her forgetfulness, fearful of what might happen to her. She has occasional trouble finding words for things, and spends time hunting around the house for objects she has misplaced. She is reluctant to leave her house because she has difficulty maneuvering in unfamiliar places or conversing with people whom she doesn't recognize. But one symptom of her condition is a desire to go through old photos of herself and her family, as if to reinforce, as long as possible, the precious memories of her life. She is determined not to lose her self.


As we come to Memorial Day weekend, we take time to remember not only those who have died in service to their country, but also all those who have been important to us. We place flowers in cemeteries and pause, for a moment, in remembrance of all fragile and fleeting gifts: the people we have loved and lost, old songs and treasured words, nighttime laughter and the memories that rise as dreams in our sleep, and a thousand sweet mornings scented with earth on rainy Spring days.


Forget-Me-Nots


Blue as sky
 they cling close to earth,
 forget-me-nots of Spring.
 We stoop to touch them,
 remembering all that we would not
 forget:
 the teacher who once kept a bouquet
 of the tiny blossoms on her desk,
 those distant days when we discovered
 our world and who we were,
 the house to which we always came home,
 the maple tree in the yard
 flinging its helicopters in the May breeze,
 the crimson geraniums on the graves
 in the country cemetery where
 spirits floated over fields of growing corn,
 and this day,
 this sweet, sweet day,
 blue as sky.


--Timothy Haut