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Mary Oliver: Why I Wake Early

Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and crotchety–

best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe to keep us from ever-darkness, to ease us with warm touching,

The Swan by Mary Oliver Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –an armful of white blossoms,a perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leanedinto the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,biting the air with its black beak?Did you hear it, fluting and whistlinga shrill dark music, like the rain pelting…

Instructions on not  giving  up  –  Ada  Limon More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the…

The new year of changes   Tomorrow it begins – the new year a box that fits in the hand unopened. It lands softly. Some leave it out there – close curtains against it or watch from windows to see what happens. I’m holding it. It feels empty, light in my palm. If opened will it sing? It will open itself. Right now, here it is, a quiet box in my hand, like a small bird that rests In readiness for…

Self-Portrait as Bronze Age Burial MoundThe hearth is my heart. I amrooms of darkness and forgotten light.My language is the mid-winter sun.Whale-backed. Face-down.Burrowed into by rabbits.Burrowed into by rats.Ashes and teeth are my language. I carry the weight of responsibility.I am detailed in archaeological sketches,I appear huge on old maps, I loomon the skyline.My thoughts and secrets are…

The Stolen Orange – Brian Patten When I left I stole an orangeI kept it in my pocketIt felt like a warm planet Everywhere I went smelt of orangesWhenever I got into an awkward situationI’d take out the orange and smell it And immediately on even dead branches I sawThe lovely and fierce orange blossomThat smells so much of joy When I went out I stole an orangeIt was a safeguard against…

Chris Kinsey – “Hanging out the washing”

I’m so pleased to bring my new book to you. Just Watch Me Fly is about life through the arc of a year, with glimpses of nature – its seasons, blossoming trees and birds, their flight, ours. Family life, looking back and forward, our struggles, our freedoms. Here’s what people have been saying: Flight soars through Rose Cook’s poems. Haiku-light in their language,they don’t hide the gravitas of…