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?

Retired. Having fun with photography. Journal daily. Meditate daily. Learning haiku/poetry. Have a love for fountain pens.

4 Comments

  • Tom Dills

    May 19, 2022 at 3:47 pm

    Oh, studious one. 🙂

    At first I thought those were your words. They certainly echo your pondering expression. Great portrait, hopefully it was not 4am.

    • Monte Stevens

      May 19, 2022 at 3:53 pm

      I read her poem the other night and was quite taken by it. I’m sure you can relate to reading something that stirs a thought and off we go to that “temple of thought.” In fact she does that to me a lot! As soon as I read this poem I had the idea for this image and acted on the idea.

    • Monte Stevens

      May 20, 2022 at 9:26 am

      Thanks, Faye. It did not turn out the way I envisioned it. More practice I guess! Rain and snowing here. But, looks like you have some nice weather.