THE NEW NOBILITY

The tawny gold of the first chantrelle
beneath the rough wall of fir bark,
a gleam in the undergrowth
to ignite the eye and ennoble the imagination.
Everyone is waiting for breakfast
to which I bring this husk and this holiness
of the newly grown and the newly found.

White plates are laid along the table,
on each of them the omelettes
rest steaming, deep and rich,
the eggs brought from a friend's farm,
the chantrelles nested firmly
in their hot buttered interiors,
and the basil flecked
through them, plucked from the last
tangy stems of a summer garden.

Perfection is a fragile, ice-thin ground
that barely holds our human weight,
one false step and everything cracks
black to the edge. In this perfection
no one dares mention the waters
of the Saratoga Passage shining through glass.
No one mentions our present happiness;
though the last dead century of grief
and misery has barely dropped from our grasp.

Outside the window, the children are playing
in borrowed clothes. One throws
back her head, sleeves trailing on the ground
and laughs in the sunlight,
and we laugh in witness, for in the midst of history
we are happy like them and all before them.
In their happiness everything still bears our weight.
Timelessness is the new nobility.

  -- David Whyte
      from Everything is Waiting for You 
     ©2003 Many Rivers Press