Good Earth Fri-Day, Daffodils, and William Wordsworth

If weather is a metaphor for our feelings, then the cold, windy and gray day mirrors my heart. It is both Earth Day and Good Friday, days that have me thinking about my own relationship to Nature as well as resurrection and redemption. It's been a long winter, and I am ready for Vitamin D from the sun to flood my veins.

Yes, I need a little nature therapy, so a visit to the daffodil garden in Litchfield, Connecticut is the perfect remedy.

We are all a part of the fabric of the Universe: we all matter, whether we identify with the gray wind or a lovely flower in whatever particular moment.

It is beautiful in spite of (because of?) the dismal weather surrounding the garden. Life still springs forth, there is peace and beauty. My daughter frolicks as she poses for my camera, delighting in the daffodils and surrounding lake, a large rock, and a tree stump broken to look like a throne. Scarlett is the Faerie Queene. Yet instead of Spenser, we find one of the most lyrical poems by William Wordsworth etched in stone. I stop short and read, tears in my eyes. William in 1804 knows exactly how I feel! Literature, Nature, Love - I am transcended, transported to another realm. I am William, I am a daffodil, I am my daughter, I am me.

DAFFODILS

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Out-did the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company: I gazed--and gazed--but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.