Don’t call this world adorable, or useful, that’s not it.
It’s frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightening is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree bras like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn’t’ the wind, turning in circles, invent eat dance?
Haven’t the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, the Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don’t call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring or was he looking
to the center of the everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there, beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
~ Mary Oliver
Comments