Day 25: James Schuyler

Today's prompt is to write something after James Schuyler's 'Hymn to Life'. 


Promenade through the Present 

Behold the day greening forth,
bursting at the seams with mirth. 
The birds are kites, flown by some deity.
Spring imbues its generosity everywhere,
in the budding and blooming, the
B-E-G-I-N-N-I-N-G. In the beginning
there is wonder and the word is life. 
April's bright hand offering warmth
flowers colouring in increments of light.
Gorse bundles sunshine on mountainsides,
bluebells sing a chorus of purple tunes.
Even now, I walk in a green canopy of memories
as April passes its yellow nectar to blue-robed May
and the way is forward, written in leaves,
a fanfare of fervent believers. 
And the sky tumbles its way onward 
through days, hours, minutes -
and everything is either a heaven or a hell
given the right mindframe.

Laughter lines, open roads, poetry, honesty,

love, language, stars at night. 
I want to be alive, never heeding death.

I want to be beginning in the zeal of every
green spring, every new morning,
every minute, every moment.
Every righteous passion of magnificent gladness -
and the pink of the camellia is a heart in bloom
and every unknown curlicue of doubt
is no snake in the grass, but a comma,
a shadow in this hinterland of a heart full 
of crepuscular light. And the sky seen 
from beneath a tree's leaves is an eternity of blue. 
How day softens into evening. The apricot kiss of dusk.
the hours, ticking by like legions of small mercies. 
Midnight, stepping out to the garden on this Saturday night

and not a soul in sight, not a sound on the street,

only the orchestral echoes of Leonard Cohen's

 "like a bird on a wire..." floating, tendril-like, 

from the tv I've left behind. Above right, Venus, 
looking on, watching it all. I smile.