Tag: Nature

Appreciating life

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There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May
in the forest, just
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that….

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows?

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.

Mary Oliver, Moths (extracts) 

Listen

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Nature’s silence is its one remark, and every flake of world is a chip off that old mute and immutable block. The Chinese say that we live in the world of the ten thousand things. Each of the ten thousand things cries out to us precisely nothing.
Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk

Sunday Quote: Busy

Karl Duffy4 Comments

What if we are so busy searching for worth

that we miss the sapphire sky and cackling blackbird.

 Mackenzie Connellee, Suggestion, in Naomi Shihab Nye (ed.,) Time You Let Me In

More than your sorrow

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The seed of suffering in you may be strong, but don’t wait until you have no more suffering before allowing yourself to be happy.

Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful…

How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow?

It is natural – you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Sunday Quote: Aware

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it is a serious thing
just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world

Mary Oliver

As wildflowers do

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Over and over we break
open, we break and
we break and we open.
For a while, we try to fix
the vessel — as if
to be broken is bad.
As if with glue and tape
and a steady hand we
might bring things to perfect
again. As if they were ever
perfect. As if to be broken is not
also perfect. As if to be open
is not the path toward joy.

The vase that’s been shattered
and cracked will never
hold water. Eventually
it will leak. And at some
point, perhaps, we decide
that we’re done with picking
our flowers anyway, and no
longer need a place to contain them
We watch them grow just
as wildflowers do — unfenced,
unmanaged, blossoming only
when they’re ready — and mygod,
how beautiful they are amidst
the mounting pile of shards.

Rosemery Wahtola Trommer, American Poet, The Way it is