The Ineffable Goodness

There is, can be - should be - an ineffable goodness about life:
Warm Sun, seeing-off dark cloud
When we walk among hills
And stop, to feel the scenery below
Spread out before us, mile upon glorious mile
Knowing then in that instant the numinosity
Of love and of life:

We are born for this,
We are meant for this,
But how often - and how many times -
Do we turn away in anger, indifference or hate
Losing thus the beauty of a sky cloudless
In its blue
When we, met for the first time, sat sipping our coffee
Daring to look, and felt the need to touch, then
There, as life in that city Cafe passed as such life
Passes by?
How often -and how many times -
Do we forget the feel, the warmth, of that first embrace,
Love to love, life to life, death to the death
That is indifference, intolerance, hate?

There is such a simple lesson, there -
When we lie on the warming grass as the breeze of Summer
Takes away the heat of Sun:
A special remembering when we - the adult -
Recall the joy of play;
So much lost, for so little,
Forgetting the life that lives, within,
Lost, taken, when we forget the unique possibility
Which we, still children, are:
One life among so many,
One possibility of growth
Growing up between the Light and the Dark
When memories of suffering and of sadness change us
Bringing back the slow, quiet, silent, beautiful rhythm of Life:

And that time when we, on that beach, sat
Amid the sand with wet feet, Sun-drying,
Each hour, minute, precious
As love grew as it grew
From each kiss, touch, smile
And we knew gentleness as it reached out
To claim us, change us
Until we felt our very being would burst
So great the life that pulsed within us,
So great the joy

As when we, high-tide caught, scrambled up those jagged rocks
Laughing, playing, while the foam of the Sea
Grew small, smaller, until weary and cut but happy
We lay down in cliff-top grass to kiss, there
On that day when Life changed us:
For a moment.

But we who might grow, could grow, forget in the living
These lessons of love -
So strange, such lapses
When there is, can be, should be, an ineffable goodness
In living and in life.

DW Myatt