Yes

Susan Ashworth.

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That's why we wake
and look out – no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

– William Stafford

The third poem with “yes”. Like the “let” poems, I thought I'd put together a few different sides. “Let” was a fascinating word to see in poetry, so loaded with meaning. “Yes” is too. As a way of approaching the world, in welcome, openness, receptivity, in anticipation of possibilities. Also, the idea of life itself being affirmative, having a positive conclusion, of there being a sense of sustained order underlying everything. William Stafford’s poem feels similar to Jane Kenyon’s "Otherwise" in its awareness of change, that circumstances could be quite different tomorrow, or in a minute, and that this should be an incentive for us to pay attention to what is good, to what is going well, to the "little" things like the beauty of the time of day, the way the light falls, the sounds of people and the hum of activity around us, the whole scope of the earth in it's movement. I like how "yes" is used only once, in the title. It feels like a breath of thanks, as if the speaker took a break from his work, sat down with a cuppa, looked out the window and thought "This is a good moment. Yes. It could have been different." 

Wood Pictures in Spring

Sarah Harding

Wood Pictures in Spring

The rich brown-umber hue the oaks unfold
When spring's young sunshine bathes their trunks in gold,
So rich, so beautiful, so past the power
Of words to paint--my heart aches for the dower
The pencil gives to soften and infuse
This brown luxuriance of unfolding hues,
This living luscious tinting woodlands give
Into a landscape that might breathe and live,
And this old gate that claps against the tree
The entrance of spring's paradise should be--
Yet paint itself with living nature fails:
The sunshine threading through these broken rails
In mellow shades no pencil e'er conveys,
And mind alone feels fancies and portrays.

John Clare

 “Past the power of words to paint.” I’m going to call this poem an artistic intersection. The poet feels words are inadequate to convey the beauty he sees, and wishes he could use pencil and paint instead, but no, that won’t be adequate either, this is a living unfolding of colour and light – no, he thinks, there is no medium except the moment and the mind itself. Which made me think – are our memories of certain things works of art? Could it be said that our minds hold a gallery of moments, of places and interactions that we can call up and recreate? Do we stand in the art museums of our minds sometimes, to enjoy a breathing beauty which language and paint are too sluggish to portray? I had never thought of it quite like that before.