May Sarton

May Sarton (1912-1995) was the pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton, a Belgian-American poet, novelist and memoirist. Sheila Ballantyne in the New York Times Book Review, said of May…”she was a seeker after truth with a kind of awesome energy for renewal, an ardent explorer of life's important questions.”

I thought of happiness, how it is woven

Out of the silence in the empty house each day

And how it is not sudden and it is not given

But is creation itself like the growth of a tree.

No one has seen it happen, but inside the bark

Another circle is growing in the expanding ring.

No one has heard the root go deeper in the dark,

But the tree is lifted by this inward work

And its plumes shine, and its leaves are glittering.

— May Sarton from 'The Work of Happiness’