Self Portrait Tuesday
Every morning I read a poem. Just one. It takes a lot of discipline to stop at one, to spend five minutes with a handful of words. I lunge ahead for the next poem but stop myself just in time. With a struggle I close the book and sit there looking out the window at the morning, feeling glad that I'm alive.
This week it is Mary Oliver who has got me feeling as if the top of my head is being taken off. Pure light on the page.
"...and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth..."
-- from "When Death Comes"
This week it is Mary Oliver who has got me feeling as if the top of my head is being taken off. Pure light on the page.
"...and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth..."
-- from "When Death Comes"
posted by Green Whale | 2:26 PM
4 Comments:
Oh C! Welcome to SPT. Really lovely entry.
I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars,/
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,/
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'ouevre for the highest,/
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,/
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,/
And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue,/
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
-Walt Whitman, from "Song of Myself"
Thanks! Rebel Girl, I feel like I should quote something back at you -- duelling poetry!
No need. The Oliver poem just sent me to Whitman.
I was glad to go.
thanks.
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