A Day in Bed with Aunt Maud

A DAY IN BED WITH AUNT MAUD
by Elizabeth Smither from The Year of Adverbs (Auckland University Press)

My dear high-foreheaded aunt, good
at sums and attentive to all that love
demands, loved a day in bed.

No illness drove her there, or fever
no drenched nightgown, twisted
but the bliss of a day in bed.

She lay, she slept, she reached out
a hand towards an improving book
she closed its covers on her day in bed.

She contemplated the plaster ceiling rose
and all the world that swam around it
a spider web from her day in bed.

She lay like someone in a shroud, proud
of her stretched toes, her spine
bearing not this day on her day in bed.

She took some rations, delicate things
and a jug of fresh-made squash
she dined daintily on her day in bed.

What did you get? the others asked.
A firmer view of the world, she said
through lying down on my day in bed

and love and anything you care to ask.
They never did. Away they sped
She contemplated them from her day in bed.

Here is the promised "day in bed" poem.  This idea might seem like an indulgence in what many churches deem a "penitential" season but as I mentioned in an earlier post, Lent to me has always been more about perspective than penance.  Sometimes being fed on a diet of bread and water in the silence of the desert provides the right conditions to survey the landscape of our lives.  But other times, we need to feed our souls with a good book, comfort food and, perhaps, a day in bed to give us a firmer view of not only the world, but also our place in it.

What do you need to feed your soul now?  Is it a time to feast a little or fast a little?