One
The mosquito is so small
it takes almost nothing to ruin it.
Each leaf, the same.
And the black ant, hurrying.
So many lives, so many fortunes!
Every morning, I walk softly and with forward glances
down to the ponds and through the pinewoods.
Mushrooms, even, have but a brief hour
before the slug creeps to the feast,
before the pine needles hustle down
under the bundles of harsh, beneficent rain.
How many, how many, how many
make up a world!
And then I think of that old idea: the singular
and the eternal.
One cup, in which everything is swirled
back to the color of the sea and sky.
Imagine it!
A shining cup, surely!
In the moment in which there is no wind
over your shoulder,
you stare down into it,
and there you are,
your own darling face, your own eyes.
And then the wind, not thinking of you, just passes by,
touching the ant, the mosquito, the leaf,
and you know what else!
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky,
how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you,
even your eyes, even your imagination.
— Mary Oliver
One Response
thoughts?oh, that,that which
thoughts?
oh, that,
that which goes
athwart our faces
traces of this and titters of that
something about
how we feel small
like thoughts, like
ants, leaves, oceans, notions of
and of the color of running drains
in settings outside our own habitat
thou are a habitat
like blue ants
or black oceans
or needle winds
or pine for your world
something crawling
along with such otherness little
movements, that defy
our swift fleeting
ones
some connection to nature
but also to the nature
of the poem
if poem be told
makes ants of us
on a bed of planet sized sand
grain for rain
and blood
that is drawn up the squito
pen
only to find a nice soft point
to enter again