Quiet and Ready Enough

"If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment." Henry David Thoreau

I had a terrible day and was exhausted early, but refused to allow the day to beat me. I did not watch the clock, I did not count the seconds. My mantra was Duncan's, which has done wonders for me the past week. Hunt. Dive. Tree. And as tired as I was, as badly as I wanted to come home, take off my shoes and do nothing, I knew that my salvation was with Duncan at the lake. And as we marched along the trail–Duncan, low with his nose to the ground–taking in the sound of the meadowlarks and the crickets and feeling the warm sun on my face and arms and the back of my neck, I understood the Thoreau quote, that even our disappointments, if we allow them, can lead us to a place of peace and provide a strength we did not know we had. I would not have loved this afternoon as I did without the nastiness of the morning and the trials of the day. It was like discovering the turning lines a poem, this rewriting of the day. Yesterday I said that dogs could lead us to poetry with their vision, and today that point was made again. It reminded me of a portion of the poem "Lake Water" by David Ferry.

"It is like an idea for a poem not yet written
And maybe never to be completed, because
The surface of the page is like lake water,
That takes back what is written on its surface,
And all my language about the lake and its
Emotions or its sweet obliviousness,
Or even its being like an origination,
Is all erased with the changing of the breeze
Or because of the heedless passing of a cloud."

If we let it, anything and everything can move our spirit and change how we see the world. We need only listen.