Remember the old Beatles song? The one that begins When I find myself in times of trouble…? It’s Let It Be, from the white album. And while Mother Mary isn’t my default for times of sorrow and trouble, poetry is. As is getting outside.

Something there is about sitting in the green light of summer, the yellow light of fall, that heals me. I can watch birds at the feeders on the deck for hours, happy to compare the flight of tiny hummers to large pigeons. Soothed by the whirrrring of wings and the calling songs.

Here’s a poem that reminds me there will always be ‘outside,’ replete with the things that repair hearts. Like frogs, this one sitting happily on my flowerpot outside, 10 feet up from the ground… Life is magic, isn’t it?

From a Country Overlooked

by Tom Hennen

There are no creatures you cannot love.
A frog calling at God
From the moon-filled ditch
As you stand on the country road in the June night.
The sound is enough to make the stars weep
With happiness.
In the morning the landscape green
Is lifted off the ground by the scent of grass.
The day is carried across its hours
Without any effort by the shining insects
That are living their secret lives.
The space between the prairie horizons
Makes us ache with its beauty.
Cottonwood leaves click in an ancient tongue
To the farthest cold dark in the universe.
The cottonwood also talks to you
Of breeze and speckled sunlight.
You are at home in these
great empty places
along with red-wing blackbirds and sloughs.
You are comfortable in this spot
so full of grace and being
that it sparkles like jewels
spilled on water.