EVERYTHING IS NEW Poem by Esther Jansma

What was going to happen was already here,
spelt out precisely by a cup which shattered,
shards marked with the prints of thumbs,
the shiver-script of pinsharp twigs.

It is not a tale we made up but something
that was here and is here in the traces of ditches
and postholes and log-fires long gone cold.
It just needed finding, that was all.

Someone had to look at it and say: what is it
this is it, and there it was, a house with a hearth,
people as always and always being themselves
for the first time here and now, sitting

with warm hands which clasp a cup
by the fire and talking and the tick-tick of rain
is a circle of sound and nothing matters, night,
invisible clouds, the silence of everything

that lies asleep or is waiting for day outside
are the roof and the walls round the roof and the corners
of the house that is already old but new
for it is newfound in this now.