It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Great Egret
How I go to the woods
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable.
I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
~ Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose
Black Locust
When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
~ Mary Oliver
Jones Gap
My breath before me
A hat upon my head
In absolute stillness
I hear the katydid sing
So close I can hear the massage of their wings
Before his music fills the air
Of the night.
I climb giant rocks
To better look out over the river
Gazing into the wandering waters
The stories it's molecules can tell..
Without from whence it came
It would have no where to go.
In the darkness of the new moon
The wolf moon
I have heard the Owls song
And the coyotes howl.
I wonder over all of it.
How did they come to also be in this time?
In this place?
