A couple of years ago I read “Big Panda and Tiny Dragon”, a picture book that extols some rather Buddhist virtues on patience, calm, and letting go. One page (or several pages—I have since lent the book out and do not remember) describes the seasonality of life. This panda and dragon gently remind us not to be so hard on ourselves and to accept that there is a time for rest and a time for work; that these comprise life’s “seasons”. This “seasons in all things” is what grounds me in times where I feel particularly unproductive or stagnant. I likewise obtain from it the same calmness in periods where I feel overworked.
Not being a Christian myself, it was recently brought to my attention that the “seasons in all things” is a biblical verse, quoted in Ecclesiastes 3. I think it a beautiful verse. While the themes are different, its rhythmic structure reminds me very much of the Quran’s Surah Ar-Rahman; perhaps the most moving surah in the Quran, one I find myself thinking on often.
This poem had been in my drafts, and I suppose is inspired by all the above.
In spring will the fawn be born
on unsteady legs amid the mud,
and will the first green push through
what winter left behind,
Come summer will the bees
thread themselves through clover,
and the fawn be reared
in a long, unhurried light,
In autumn will the leaves fall,
amid the southward honks of geese,
as the bear grows heavy
with preparation,
Then comes winter still,
wherein the bear shall rest,
and the lakes shall thicken into silence,
and all things enter a torpor,
When the fawn, the bee, the bear, and the goose
observe the seasons in all things,
who are we to expect a constant spring?