I am thinking of you
Each one of you
One at a time
As is my wont.
I love each of you
With the clarity
And straightforwardness
I love nature.
I like to look at you
The way I look
At hummingbirds or hawks
In their flights and pauses
Or at Venus and the Pleiades
In the evening sky
Or at a flowering peach tree
Or a night-blooming cereus.
For better or for worse
I think human nature is
Being a part of all nature
As you and I surely are.
What else we are
I do not know
But I do know
We can think and laugh and care.
And it is true
Our hearts can be battered
By three-personed
Or other gods
Or our griefs lifted
By those same gods
Or other journeyers
From time to time.
We have our perils
Our terrors
And we know high joy
As in a waterfall.
We are like rainbows
Sometimes like mountains
In majesty and comfort
And we lift eyes to each other.
We are like sand
Shifting in winds that call us
Yet know a continuity:
We know each other.
We are a part
Of that great unison
Of earth, air, fire, water
Rotating through forms
Hearing echoes, calls
Answering with no more choice
Than electron to proton
In our time, in time.
We must answer.
The quality of song, the lilt
We can do something about
But we must answer.
- Lois Langland, Professor of Psychology Emerita, Scripps College
Psychological Perspectives, Issue #22, Spring 1990