Fall Song

Another year gone, leaving everywhere
its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves,

the uneaten fruits crumbling damply
in the shadows, unmattering back

from the particular island
of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

except underfoot, moldering
in that black subterranean castle

of unobservable mysteries- roots and sealed seeds
and the wanderings of water. This

I try to remember when time's measure
painfully chafes, for instance when autumn

flares out at the last, boisterous and like us longing
to stay- how everything lives, shifting

from one bright vision to another, forever
in these momentary pastures.

Mary Oliver

Ode to a Friend

MINDFUL

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for-

to look, to listen

to lose myself

inside this soft world-

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant-

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentaions.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these-

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

-Mary Oliver