Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine
the prayers that are made
out of grass.
1 comment:
Here's my favorite Mary Oliver poem. I just love her:
Mary Oliver, In Blackwater Woods
Look, the trees are turning
their own bodies into pillars of light,
are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,
the long tapers of cattails
are bursting and floating away
over the blue shoulders of the ponds,
and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now.
Every year
everything I have ever learned in my lifetime
leads back to this:
the fires and the black river of loss
whose other side is salvation,
whose meaning none of us will ever know,
To live in this world you must be able to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it against your bones
knowing your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
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