• flowers,  Mary Oliver,  Plants,  quotes

    What Life Should I Live?

    May 30, 2022

    What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do with it? What is the gift that I should bring to the world? What is the life I should live?

    Mary Oliver

    Someone has planted Irises along the parking area at Pineridge Natural Area. I want to thank the beautiful soul(s) for planting them and the gift they brought to the world! Now I’m offering this image of them covered with raindrops from a nice refreshing rain. We had a nice lovely rain yesterday and can expect the same today.

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  • Black and White,  Mary Oliver,  poems,  poetry,  Self-portraits

    Temple of Thought

    May 19, 2022

    Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
    strikes me from sleep, and I rise
    from the comfortable bed and go
    to another room, where my books are lined up
    in their neat and colorful rows. How 

    magical they are! I choose one
    and open it. Soon
    I have wandered in over the waves of the words
    to the temple of thought.

                      And then I hear
    outside, over the actual waves, the small,
    perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
    and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
    to the fading moon, to the pink flush
    swelling in the east that, soon,
    will become the long, reasonable day. 

                           Inside the house
    it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
    in which I am sitting.
                      I do not close the book. 
    Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

    Mary Oliver, her poem The Loon from What Do I know?
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  • Avian,  Mary Oliver,  meadowlark,  poems

    You sing, I listen

    April 29, 2022

    Meadowlark, when you sing it’s as if
    you lay your yellow breast upon mine and say
    hello, hello, and are we not
    of one family, in our delight of life?
    You sing, I listen.
    Both are necessary
    if the world is to continue going around
    night-heavy then light–laden, though not
    everyone knows this or at least
    not yet,

    or, perhaps, has forgotten it
    in the torn fields,

    in the terrible debris of progress.

    Mary Oliver, Meadowlark Sings and I Greet Him In Return

    We need rain. So far for the month of April we have .1 inch of rain. Dixon Reservoir is really low at Pineridge Natural Area. As I watch the sun rise four mule deer graze before me. And, the meadowlarks sing and I listen.

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  • clouds,  landscape,  Mary Oliver,  natural areas,  poems,  quotes,  sunrises

    Starting Tomorrow

    April 20, 2022
    Sunrise at Topminnow Natural Area

    I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
    flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
    as it was taught, and if not how shall
    I correct it?

    Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
    can I do better?

    Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
    can do it and I am, well,
    hopeless.

    Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
    am I going to get rheumatism,
    lockjaw, dementia?

    Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
    And gave it up. And took my old body
    and went out into the morning,
    and sang.

    Mary Oliver, Devotions

    I’ve worried a lot, too. I worry much less at my age because I also finally saw that it never really helped. I’m also a hopeless singer, with most of my practice done in the shower, solo. But, Mary Oliver’s poem has inspired me to stop worrying whether I’m as good a singer as a sparrow and just sing. So, starting tomorrow morning… 😁

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  • clouds,  landscape,  Mary Oliver,  mountains,  quotes,  sunsets

    Attitude

    March 29, 2022
    One of our Colorado sunsets

    Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves. In what is probably the most serious inquiry of my life, I have begun to look past reason, past the provable, in other directions. Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition, the condition of my own spiritual state. I am not talking about having faith necessarily, although one hopes to. What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude. Such interest nourishes me beyond the finest compendium of facts. In my mind now, in any comparison of demonstrated truths and unproven but vivid intuitions, the truth loses.

    Mary Oliver, Upstream
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  • journal,  Mary Oliver,  quotes,  writing/reading

    Attention

    March 21, 2022

    Attention is the beginning of devotion.

    Mary Oliver

    I found this quote in one of Mary Oliver’s books called Upstream which is a book of essays. I’ve had the book for awhile and felt the need to start reading it. Her quote caused me to reflect on what has my attention and what am I devoted to. I’m pretty much devoted to photography since I have been searching for images for many years now. I am also devoted to my meditation practice. I am devoted to my daily quiet times, reading, and journaling because they have my attention. What draws your attention? What are you devoted to?

    Have a great Monday!

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