Transformation...the tree of THIS life

I feel my own strength and fragility tonight as I reflect on my days at my husband's bedside, watching his slow-paced recovery from the massive heart attack that nearly took his life...somehow this poem by Anne Morrow Lindbergh seems to espress my thoughts and feelings, and reflect my experiences much more accurately now than on the day I wrote these words in my journal:
          "Already I have shed the leaves of youth,
           Stripped by the wind of time down to the truth
           Of winter branches.  Linear and alone
           I stand, a lens for lives beyond my own,
           A frame through which another's fire may glow,
           A harp on which another's passions, blow.

           The pattern of my boughs, an open chart
           Spread on the sky, to others my impart
           Its leafless mysteries that once I prized,
           Before bare roots and branches equalized;
           Tendrils that tap the rain or twigs the sun
           Are all the same, shadow and substance one.
           Now that my vulnerable leaves are cast aside,
           There's nothing left to shield, no thing to hide.

           Blow through me, Life, pared down at last to bone,
           So fragile and so fearless have I grown!"

A thought: (someone's comment upon the dedication of the Vernal Utah Temple)..."The Vernal, Utah temple was a tabernacle for 90 years before it was ready to be transformed into a temple...how like us!"

Mothering My Flock

This poem by Anne Bradstreet is one of my favorites ; so fitting of my own life of Motherhood:
         
          "I had eight birds hatchet in one nest,
           Four cocks there were, and hens the rest,
           I nurst them up with pain and care,
           Nor cost, nor labour did I spare,
           Til at the last they felt their wing,
           Mounted the trees, and learned to sing.

           Or here or there, they'll take their flight,
           As is ordain'd, so shall they light...
           Mean while my days in tunes I'le spend,
           Till my weak layes with me shall end,
           In shady woods I'le sit and sing,
           And things that past, to mind I'le bring."

While all my "birds" have taken their flight, it is my observation that birds in treetops and those perched precariously on telephone wires may have found a place to light, but they soon take flight once again.  Even as I sit singing in shady woods reflecting on the things that are past...I, nor they have taken our final flight... may our destination be the same, though our flight patterns may have been different.