Today I want to share poetry from two of my favorites: the recently transitioned and missed, Mary Oliver, and the inimitable David Whyte as important reminders of the precious beauty of our world and our lives:
The Deer
You never know.
The body of night opens
like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,
like so many wrappings of mist.
And on the hillside two dear are walking along
just as though this wasn’t
the owned, tilled earth of today
but the past.
I did not see them the next day, or the next,
but in my mind’s eye –
there they are, in the long grass,
like two sisters.
This is the earnest work. Each of us is given
only so many mornings to do it –
to look around and love
the oily fur of our lives,
the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.
Days I don’t do this
I feel the terror of idleness,
like a red thirst.
Death isn’t just an idea.
When we die the body breaks open
like a river;
the old body goes on, climbing the hill.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(House of Light)
The Journey
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
enscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving
you are arriving.
~ David Whyte ~
(House of Belonging)
Thank you