Weekly Reading

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world

that has in it nothing fancy.

But it seems impossible.

Whatever the subject, the morning sun glimmers it.

The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.

The ants bore into the peony bud and

there is a dark pinprick well of sweetness.

As for the stones on the beach, forget it.

Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut,

but of course the birds were singing.

And the aspen trees were shaking

the sweetest music out of their leaves.

And that was followed by, guess what,

a momentous and beautiful silence as comes to all of us,

in little earfuls, if we’re not too hurried to hear it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs

even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,

so happy to be where they are, on the beach,

 instead of being locked up in gold.

~ Mary Oliver

The Healing Time

Finally
On my way to “yes”
I bump into all the places where I said “no” to my life

All the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages that send me down the wrong street again and again.
Where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them one by one close to my heart
and I say “holy, holy.”
~Persa Gertler