Seamus Heaney is considered one of the most significant poets of the 20th century. In his late 40s, after Selected Poems, 1966-1987, was published, his writing took a shift in tone and content. For example, Heaney began to use words such as “spirit.” A few years later he published a book of poems called The Spirit Level.
The last few weeks I’ve been reading a Heaney poem from this period in his career every morning and in “Fostering” he writes,
Me waiting until I was nearly fifty
To credit marvels. Like the tree-clock of tin cans
The tinkers made. So long for air to brighten,
Time to be dazzled and the heart to lighten.
As Heaney describes, it’s never too late or too early in one’s life to embrace the “marvels” around us. It’s never too late or too early to choose to be “dazzled” and for our “heart to lighten.”
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