Happy The Man

Antonella da Messina

Portrait of an Unknown Man

Happy The Man

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own:

He who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair or foul or rain or shine

The joys I have possessed, in spite of fate are mine.

Not Heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour

~ John Dryden ~

Crossings

Ralph Earl

Looking East from Denny Hil

Crossings

Between forest and field, a threshold

like stepping from a cathedral into the street—

the quality of air alters, an eclipse lifts,

boundlessness opens, earth itself retextured

into weeds where woods once were.

Even planes of motion shift from vertical

navigation to horizontal quiescence:

there’s a standing invitation to lie back

as sky’s unpredictable theater proceeds.

Suspended in this ephemeral moment

after leaving a forest, before entering

a field, the nature of reality is revealed.

~ Ravi Shankar ~