EDDYING AWAY

Sorry for the light blogging. I am in the process of getting my daughter (I can't believe she's all grown up!!) off to college this week. It's both painful and exhilarating for both of us; and there is a lot to do.

How time flies...it seems like just a short while ago she was a tiny little baby; then taking her first steps and then off to kindergarden! This is a big moment in my life and an even bigger one in hers.

Walking Away

For Sean
By C. Day Lewis

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of fotball, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.

I had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show-
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love proved in the letting go.


Here is the Boo on our Pismo Beach trip earlier this month:



Hope to be back to more regular blogging by the middle of next week!