Sometimes

SOMETIMES

by Sheenagh Pugh from Selected Poems (Seren)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.


This poem by Sheenagh Pugh has always seemed to me a good pairing with yesterday's poem by Jane Kenyon.  I envision the two poems as sitting on either side of a teeter-totter.  Kenyon reminds us that the good things in our lives we take for granted could be otherwise, while Sheenagh Pugh reminds us that things can go better than expected . . . sometimes.  Otherwise, sometimes, otherwise, sometimes.  Up and down, just like life.

So what is the lesson that speaks to you today? The otherwise or the sometimes?