Lately … May

On very good days, I let go of email. On one such day recently, I took time to look up the name of someone who once wrote their name on the flyleaf of a book, long before it came into my keeping. Then I pondered questions and pursued their answers. I wrote. I looked out a window and discovered that a large and placid groundhog shares our plot of land.

It so happened it was the Sabbath. I looked in a book and discovered this poem. I read it, as the calling of a heavenly host of peepers was enveloping my house, while the cold rain of the cold day was still freshening the tender blades of young grass, while a strange and beautiful flowering plant in pink and purple raiment, suddenly present like a burning bush at the top of our unkempt back hillside, was keeping the secret of its name. The poet’s spring, my spring, your spring – we cannot compel them. They come when they come. And often, across the years, they appear in perfect likeness of each other.

The First of May

Now the smallest creatures, who do not know they have names
In fields of pure sunshine open themselves and sing.
All over the marshes and in the wet meadows,
Wherever there is water, the companies of peepers
Who cannot count their members, gather with sweet shouting.
And the flowers of the woods who cannot see each other
Appear in perfect likeness of one another
Among the weak new shadows on the mossy places.
Now the smallest creatures, who know themselves by heart,
With all their tender might and roundness of delight
Spending their colors, their myriads and their voices
Praise the moist ground and every winking leaf
And the new sun that smells of the new streams.

– Anne Porter

See you in church,


Rev. Liz Lerner Maclay,
Minister Office Hours: Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday
min@firstunitarianprov.org