So much depends on...

Today I re-read (in my mind, as I so often do) 

William Carlos Williams' poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow."

so much depends

upon 

a red wheel

barrow 

glazed with rain

water 

beside the white

chickens. 

So much depends on a rusty pink wagon, too, with yellow wheels

holding a white pumpkin and an orange one, beside the hay bales, that someone parked

in a yard by a house in the Cascades

These are the moments I treasure on the road: 

the small gifts,  the keepers.

David Whyte wrote:  "When your eyes are tired, the world is tired, too...."

It's the little things that revive your vision, just as much as the large mountains.

I'm thinking, too, of the baskets of plums and apples and pears today,

and the sign: "Take what you want and pay for them at the table."

Which reminds me of another of  William Carlos Williams'  poems:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten

the plums

that were in

the icebox

and which

you were probably

saving

for breakfast

Forgive me

they were delicious

so sweet

and so cold

One reason I prefer road travel to air travel: on back roads, you can find visual poems

on the way from here to there.

John O'Donahue, the Irish mystic and poet who died a few years ago (but continues to live so vibrantly for me in his books and recordings),

said that in the language of soul, it's the small things that speak most eloquently.

When I read Williams' poems so long ago for the first time, 

I loved them!  They were not grand poems about abstract things, but tiny poems

about plums and rain water and white chickens

that made me look at everything differently.

What matters, in the end, are the moments along the road from here to there:

the bowl of good soup, the cornbread, the tarragon in the dressing,

the smell of cider at a roadside apple stand,

the boxes of plums you can pay for on the honor system.