He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats
The theme today is peace and our planet
This is one of our favourite poems and versions of it exist in many different places. From Christian poems, such as Christina Rossetti's In the Bleak Midwinter (where she offers to give her heart as she has nothing else to give) to Elton John's Your Song where he imagines having different talents, before offering the song itself.
When we step through life, in our home, in our community, in our plant, we can choose how we tread, We can tread softly as the poem exhorts, bearing the wishes and dreams of others in mind, or we can clump heavily, an elephant, our strength and our bulk clearing the path of obstructions.
Imagine how you tread in your path through your world - what sort of thing are you imagining? A tightrope walker, a tracker, a warrior, a sloth, a humming bird?
Ask a member of your community how they see themselves and explore the difference in your attitudes
Do you prefer to risk your dreams or hide them inside?
Can you imagine what kind of dreams you might lay on the ground, at risk of being trampled on? What would be worth it?
How do you walk on the planet?