" Midway in the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wood, 

for the straight way was lost. Ah, how hard it is to tell what 

that wood was, wild, rugged, harsh; the very thought of it renews 

the fear! It is so bitter that death is hardly more so. But, 

to treat of the good that I found in it, I will tell of the other things I saw 

there. I cannot rightly say how I entered it, I was so full of sleep

 at the moment I left the true way; "

Dante Inferno Canto One Singleton translation

I have been reading about Dante's Divine Comedy and it's effect on future

writers. especially other poets for many years. Since I have retired and am 

spending time at the cabin with fewer distractions I have began to study

Dante's work more seriously as one of the hobbies that I will undertake to

try and keep my mind active. I have been listening to the DVD series on

Dante from Great Courses but I also really recommend the Open Yale Courses

series they cover a number of topics in science and the arts, and are free on the 

web. Since webcasts are problematic given our internet costs at the cabin I have

been reading the book Reading Dante by Giuseppe Mazzotta a transcript of his

lectures, many of which I have watched and loved. One passage struck me as 

especially interesting as he was discussing Dante's use of hope as a "verb of the 

future" in Dante's the Vita Nuova a work which preceded the Comedy. Since

I have found a bit of introspection comes with the territory as one ages I liked

the way Mazzotta discussed the past especially past errors.

" To say "I hope" is a theological virtue, and hope here too always implies the future.

It says the past is not really over and done with because once you enter into the category

will be seen in terms of a new life of hope, you really believe you can change the meaning

 of the past. The fact that things happen whereby all your past errors can and will be seen

in terms of a new life means that there is the possibility of change instead of destruction."

from Reading Dante, by Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University Press 2014 page 10. 

When I hear them call

in the morning, before

I am quite awake,

my bed is already traveling

the daily rainbow,

the arc toward evening;

and the birds, leading

their own discreet lives

of hunger and watchfulness,

are with me all the way,

always a little ahead of me

in the long-practiced manner

of unobtrusive guides.

from Why I Need Birds

 by Lisel Mueller

        

      

Enchanted is what they were

in the old stories, or if not that,

they were guides and rescuers of the lost,

the lonely, needy young men and women

in the forest we call the world.

That was back in a time

when we all had a common language.    

from   Animals Are Entering Our Lives

 by Lisel Mueller

"Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---"

from Morning Poem

Mary Oliver

"Near me, I saw
a single cricket;
it was moving the grains of the hillside

this way and that way.

How great was its energy,
how humble its effort.
Let us hope

it will always be like this,
each of us going on
in our inexplicable ways
building the universe."

from Song of the Builders

by Mary Oliver