Brigid Poetry Festival

It's time, at the hinge of winter, for the Sixth Annual Brigid Poetry Festival. My contribution this year is "Things" by Jane Kenyon from The Boat of Quiet Hours:

Things

The hen flings a single pebble aside
with her yellow reptilian foot.
Never in eternity the same sound --
a small stone falling on a red leaf.

The juncture of twig and branch,
scarred with lichen, is a gate
we might enter, singing.

The mouse pulls batting
from a hundred-year-old quilt.
She chewed a hole in a blue star
to get it, and now she thrives....
Now is her time to thrive.

Things: simply lasting, then
failing to last: water, a blue heron's
eye, and the light passing
between them: into light all things
must fall, glad at last to have fallen.