After cooking she offered the ladle of maple syrup;
and when we had given thanks,
Nature gave it to us and said, “Drink this, all of you:
This is my life force which is shed for you. Whenever you drink it, do this for the honor and remembrance of me.
Therefore we proclaim the mystery of Nature:
Winter has died.
Spring has come.
Spring will come again.
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night
under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I
got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under
the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even
nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.
This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them — I swear it! —
would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like
the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,
I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.
Mary Oliver
http://autleaves.tumblr.com/post/37470586112/five-a-m-in-the-pinewoods-id-seen-their
she will never answer you in comprehensible words. — Ivan Turgenev
he finds it attached to the rest of the world. — John Muir
