You took me down, at the first dawn of dusk,
To the path full of trees in their wintery still
Where my footsteps pulled me to the beckoning end
And the smooth-flowing river bid me run.
Yet slowly I walked and slowly I thought,
Each footstep a breath and each breath a prayer.
My feet you made small and my head you made weak
And my heart you made beat to this slowest of days.
You showed me small things which my eyes had not seen
And kept my eyes softly, humbly on the ground.
Each peppercorn you had seen in its fall
And you showed me the small that I might see you more.
You opened on trees these impossibly small
Green hopes of leaves, the minutest of cones
On Banksia branches, August red fire,
September’s town crier, the promise of dawn.
And if in my smallness I could at last see
What yesterday I had been too large to find,
Then I walked home now quietly hopeful in this:
That your hands of eternity could shrink to hold mine.
The Consolations of Writing 