When the heart turns cartwheels

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The way a crow

Shook down on me

The dust of snow

From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart

A change of mood

And saved some part

Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost's poem 'Dust Of Snow'

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This has been one of those weeks when every day, if one spent any of it following the grotesque news of the unhappy world and of unhappy Australia, has felt, at twilight, a day one had rued.

There was one day in particular when disgusting horror was heaped upon disgusting horror. On that day to the world news of the latest grotesqueries of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu and Iran's supreme leader was added the grotesquerie of Opposition Leader Sussan Ley using the recall of Federal Parliament to again shrill at hapless Anthony Albanese that he should apologise to Australia's Jews for his somehow, she accuses, enabling the massacre at Bondi.

At twilight on that rued day I went to walk a few circuits of my local oval, to try and shake off some of the day's accumulated despairs.

That shaking off didn't go well at first. But then there appeared on the oval a girl walking the family dog, a small, exuberant creature, its thunderbolt body language radiating an enthusiastic love of life.

Pausing on the oval perhaps 100m from me the youngster let the dog off its leash and then began to throw a ball for it and then, in the intervals between throwing the ball and the joy-powered dog bringing it back to her for the next throw, the dear child performed cartwheels. Cartwheels!

The happy, simple, spectacle of this, the scurry of the dog on its merry little legs contrasted with the carefree elegance of the youngster's impromptu cartwheeling, came unexpectedly, a gift out of........

© Canberra Times