Four

1. (click on the pictures)





(found a precious, precious gem of a site .)

"An ocean voyage...a real journey ...Very exciting. As a luggage problem."

deep-sourced wonder floods my surface again when I enter this world. I remember now...


2. Put an old banjo in your room; lean it against the wall. Wooden floors help, too. Every time you blow your nose or sneeze, ethereal chord-echoes will resonate through your space.

3. Half-handed Cloud, I think you are wise and special.

4. This is not my absolute favorite piece of hers, perhaps because it is sad and not celebratory, but it is trueandgood and it is a message I need to whisper and whisper to myself today. From the collection "Why I Wake Early: New Poems by Mary Oliver"(thanks to liz for sharing Mary with me. I think hers is the most Homeish poemwriting I have ever read.):

What Was Once the Largest Shopping Center in Northern Ohio Was Built Where There Had Been a Pond I Used to Visit Every Summer Afternoon

Loving the earth, seeing what has been done to it,
I grow sharp, I grow cold.

Where will the trilliums go, and the coltsfoot?
Where will the pond lilies go to continue living
their simple, penniless lives, lifting
their faces of gold?

Impossible to believe we need so much
as the world wants us to buy.
I have more clothes, lamps, dishes, paper clips
than I could possibly use before I die.

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house,
with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass.
No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass.

And I suppose sometime I will.
Old and cold I will lie apart
from all this buying and selling, with only
the beautiful earth in my heart.

(Mary Oliver, c.2004)