Praise to the Poets of the world

If ever I wake up in the morning and feel alone in this beautiful, or terrifying, or enchanted world, I head straight to my bookshelf, and with closed eyes I reach for the poetry books that live there. I reach for Mary Oliver, or Hafiz, or Rumi, or Rilke, or some other wonderful and courageous poet willing to talk about the things that really matter, willing to dive down below the formalities of this civilized world and into the very heart of all things. 

And when I pour my steaming cup of ginger tea and snuggle in with my four legged friends on our pillowed floor, the words on those pages hold me.  And I can't help but read out loud to my purring cat and my slumbering dog, to my wilted dahlia's in their potted vase and the spider who made a web last night while I was asleep, to the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter and the cawing crow on the roof.  Poets have a way of reminding me that I am not alone, that there are people who have marveled at the sky and the stars that shine there since the beginning of time, that there is a big and beautiful mystery, that we are all a part of. 

Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere

its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply

in the shadows,

unmattering back

from the particular island

of this summer, this Now, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering

in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries-roots and sealed seeds

and the wanderings of water.  This

I try to remember when time's measure

painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing

to stay-how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever

in these momentary pastures.

~ Mary Oliver