Another lovely poem by Mary Oliver on how we can look at the world – and everything we see today – as a doorway to deeper mysteries and as a place where our heart can grow. Her words reconnect us with all that is around us and with a deep sense of acceptance of our journey here.

As for life, I’m humbled,
I’m without words sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries, beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen—
a tree angel, perhaps, or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort—
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.

Mary Oliver, Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

(Photograph courtesy of Jasmine Trotter  http://killdollphotographies.tumblr.com/)