I was booked on a
Story Coat workshop today and spent a wonderful quiet hour sewing with like-minded people. It did me the world of good. We were making free stitched circles with a 3d effect to represent
Gwennap Pit. They will border the story coat that our young Town Crier wears at all our special events, the next being Pasty Day in September. Two of these are mine and I’ve made two more tonight while watching the Olympics.
I’ve posted poems by Mary Oliver before. Somehow she always touches the spot. This one took my breath away. I shall try to “Remember my tools.”
Wage Peace
Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.
by Mary Oliver
We have just watched the wonderful Beth Shriever who, having won every heat and the semi-final by a mile, didn’t win the Olympic final of the BMX races. She was asked how she felt. I hate it when they ask that when you think they must feel devastated.
Her smiley reply was wonderful – “I’m happy, I’m healthy, I’ve got my family and my friends and that’s all that matters.” She is so right.
