Afternoon Poem I

I wrote the following poem several years ago as I drove back home one afternoon after giving last rites to a parishioner and having sat with her and her family as she died. I was there most of the day, and as I drove back home in the afternoon I was struck by the beuty of the spring, with the new leaves, and the sun dancing off of them, and the way the shadows of the trees and limbs broke up the sunlight on the road. This is what came to mind.

We come to love the land
in the quiet times
when the sun sits 
lightly on the leaves
and the wind distributes joy,
carrying pain away