Brian Crain-Lavender Hills
Why I Wake Early
Hello, sun in my face.
Mary oliver
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light-
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
How I go to the woods
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
Mary Oliver
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.
The swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Mary Oliver
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air-
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music-like the rain pelting
the trees-like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds-
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like
the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart,
how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?”
Sleeping in the forest
I thought the earth remembered me,
Mary Oliver
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
There are things you can’t reach. But
I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.
You can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of god.
And it can keep you busy as anything else, and happier.
Looking I mean not just standing around, but standing around
As though with your arms open.
Mary Oliver
Leonid Afremov Art
Last night the rain spoke to me
Last night
what joy
in a new way
smelling of iron,
and the grass below.
under a tree.
and there were stars in the sky
my right hand
and the soft rain-
Mary oliver
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
on the earth!
That's what it said
as it dropped,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.
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