In lieu of a Sunday meditation ...

The pond being pressed for time and out and about on Sunday business, and Judith Wright featuring in the correspondence, this in lieu of brooding about angry Sydney Anglicans and wicked Islamic and Catholic and Zionist fundamentalists:

Having known war and peace 
and loss and finding, 
I drink my coffee and wait 
for the sun to rise, 

With kitchen swept, cat fed, 
the day will quiet, 
I taste my fifty years 
here in the cup. 

Outside the green birds come 
for bread and water. 
Their wings wait for the sun 
to show their colours. 

 I'll show my colours too. 
Though we've polluted 
even this air I breathe 
And spoiled green earth; 

though, granted life or death, 
death's what we're chosing, 
and though these years we live 
scar flesh and mind, 

still, as the sun comes up 
bearing my birthday, 
having met time and love 
I raise my cup - 

 dark, bitter, neutral, clean, 
sober as the morning - 
to all I've seen and known - 
to this new sun.

Actually they come for the wild, exhilarating, intoxicating taste of cherry blossom, but they too, like decent paganists everywhere, raise their cup to the new sun ... even on a cloudy day ...