Saturday, November 2, 2019

Poetry in Ordinary Time: For Autumn, All Saints, All Souls...





This gift from Mary Oliver, for your enjoyment and reflection:


Snow Geese

Oh, to love what is lovely, and will not last!
     What a task
          to ask

of anything, or anyone,

yet it is ours,
    and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.

One fall day I heard 
   above me, and above the sting of the wind, a sound
I did not know, and my look shot upward; it was

a flock of snow geese, winging it
    faster than the ones we usually see,
and, being the colour of snow, catching the sun

so they were, at least in part, golden.  I

held my breath
as we do
sometimes
to stop time
when something wonderful
has touched us

as with a match
which is lit, and bright,
but does not hurt
in the common way,

but delightfully,
as if delight
were the most serious thing
you ever felt.

The geese
flew on.
I have never
seen them again.

Maybe I will, someday, somewhere.
Maybe I won't.
It doesn't matter.
What matters
is that, when I saw them,
I saw them
as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.

-- Mary Oliver, from Devotions: The Selected Poems... Penguin Press, 2017





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