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Enduring love was his answer.

He wrote this more than a hundred years ago and doesn't it still resonate in 2011.

When I was in my sixties, twenty and more years ago, I lived for several years alone in the country in a big house surrounded by fields and pastures.

No lights or houses were visible. One a september night, when there was to be a meteor shower, I crossed the road in the dark and spread a blanket on the grass near the barn. I lay down on it to watch the stars fall. My loyal dog sat  by my head, alert and apprehensive. In a minute the cat appeared from the shadows, climbed casually onto my chestm put his head under my chin, his paws on my shoulders, stretched out and began purring.

From the silent sky, meteors, in bright arcs, were being thrown out above and around me,  by the tens and twenties from the zillions of stars sparkling above me , only to be snuffed out before I could say,"Lookk at that!". I lay there transfixed.

Suddenly, there was a sound from the far end of the pasture. Where a creek ran through a copse of woods, there was a stamping, a commotion, a cracking of branches. The horses had got wind of us!

Then the ground shook with the beat of hooves as my big thorobred horse came tearing across the length of the pasture followed  wildly by his four mares and the young colt. They tore around the barn, turf flying, and circled around me several times at a frantic speed, breathing hard, until they slowed to a stop. The big horse put his head down and, snorting and dancing, came cautiously over to see what dangerous intruder was there. The mares stayed back, side-steppping and blowing softly. When he discovered thqat it was me, he raised his head and sighed as much as to say, "It's only Peg, lying down in the grass, for heaven's sake!"

Then the mares came around and put their noses down to me too and I felt the warmth of their sweet grass breaths, and I felt the warmth of my dog's body leaning close, and the purring of the cat against my cheek. Looking up I saw only the dark forms of the horses' faces. The circle of strong legs and hoofs formed a protective barricade. I felt the very grass blades and their tangle of roots pushing up from the rich earth to hold me.

The black fringe of distant trees around the big pasture framed our little world there. We and every living thing were part of the vast universe that hung above us firing off streamers of light on our tiny scene.

I can;t make you experience this as I did, but for me it was a profoundly moviing experience - one that I will never forget. It was the only time that I have felt myself to be a part of the whole of existence. Is that spirituality?

Our national poet laureate Billy Collins, a poet whom Susan Burnore and I like very much, wrote this poem that sums up what you can do with your life while you live beyond  all that you ever wanted. It's called" 

                                                                      THE PARADE

How exhilerating it was to march

Along the boulevards

In the flash of trumpets

And under all the waving flags -

The flag of desire, the flag of ambition.

So many of us streamiing along -

All of humanity really,

Moving in perfect sync,

Yet each lost in the room of a private dream.

How stimulatiing the scenary of the world,

The rows of roadside trees,

 The huge blue sheet of the sky.

How endless it seemed, until we veered off the broad turnpike,

Into a pasture of high grass, heading toward the dizzying cliffs of mortality.

Generation after generation we shoulder forward

Under the play of clouds

Until we high-step off the sharp lip into space.

So I should not have to remind you

That little time is giveb here

To rest on a wayside bench

To stop and bend to the wildflowwers

Or to study a bird on a branch.

Not when the young keep shoving us from behind,

Not when the old are tugging us forward,

Pulling our arms with their feeble strength.