Innisfree – All the Wonders

This Holy Place

I have been content
to be here in the mountains.
Watching, walking, writing.

What a gift to get away,
to hold solitude.
To sleep and wake in
this holy place,
this cabin of memories.

I am not alone.
I am surrounded by the saints.

Taking Root

This morning
I saw wildflowers blooming,
Rooted in the cleft of a rock.
Petals waved like
Delicate violet water spouts.

How can it be?
This fragile miracle,
This coming together of seed and soil
Taking root in a granite crag.

We, too, sink
Tender, resilient roots
In precarious places
And bloom.

Our family’s vacation spot, Innisfree, is named for the poem written in 1888 by Irish poet William Butler Yeats. We have a roaring river rather than a lake whose waves lap the shore, but the feeling is the same. With gratitude for the beauty, the gift, the stability of this place.

Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
-W.B. Yeats
1865-1939