Post 11

Ten Thousand Flowers in Spring

---

Wu-Men

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,

this is the best season of your life.

Post 10

April

---

Mary Oliver

I wanted to speak at length about

The happiness of my body and the

Delight of my mind for it was

April, a night, a full moon and--

But something in myself for maybe

From somewhere other said: not too

Many words, please, in the muddy shallows the

Frogs are singing.

Post 9

Walking Down Blanco Road at Midnight

---

Naomi Shihab Nye

There is a folding into the self which occurs

when the lights are small on the horizon

and no light is shining into the face.

It happens in a quiet place.

It is a quiet unfolding,

like going to sleep in

the comfortable family home.

When everyone else goes to sleep

the house folds up

The windows shut their eyes.

If you are inside you are automatically folded.

If you are outside walking by the folded house

you feel so lonesome you think you are going crazy.

You are not going crazy.

You are beginning to fold up in your own single way.

You feel your edges move toward center,

your heart like a folded blanket unfolding

and folding in with everything contained.

You feel like you do not need anyone to love you anymore

because you already feel everything.

You feel it, you fold it, and for awhile now,

it will quietly rest.

Post 8

Late Summer

Carrie Fountain from Burn Lake

Out for a walk tonight,
the dog is throwing all her weight
against the leash, lunging toward
the fat tomcat

licking his black ankles
with a delicious, solemn attention
at the top of the neighbor’s steps.

Because this is what the dog
was made to do.
Because for some lucky animals

the space between the body
and what it wants
is all there is.

Post 7

The Summer Day

---

Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean-

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

Post 6

On soft Spring nights . . .

---

Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars – Something good will come out of all things yet – And it will be golden and eternal just like that – There’s no need to say another word.

Post 5

Starlings in Winter
by Mary Oliver


Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.