This is a poem that I wrote a couple of years ago, as a special commission for a special lady, and her family have given me their blessing for me to share it more widely. It’s a poem that came in a burst yet that came from so deep, expressing something true and lovely, something healing and consoling, that I have always felt about the world and yet which somehow I’d not articulated before, at least not so clearly. And right now it feels like the right time to share it, a small quiet thing, but one that I hope might also bring a good moment for other people….

The small and the large

By Sophie Masson

A bee moves among the flowers

A bird sings a song of praise

An ant lifts a heavy burden

A lizard loafs in the sun’s rays:

A small world to us unfolding,

Yet in the small there is the large.

A seedling rises from the furrow

A glance is shared in a crowded room

A child wobbles to a mother’s arms

A tree that’s bare begins to bloom:

Small steps to us revealing

That in the small there is the large.

In shadow and sunshine

In day and in night

On the soft wings of moments

Our bruised hearts take flight:

A small wisdom given–

That the small is the large.