The Sun

Yesterday it rained, slow and steady, with a chill in the air. It was the kind of day that beckons one to stay indoors, curled up with a book, or knitting. It was my day off and I didn't do much of anything. Today the sun rises, and it's back to work. But first a moment of prayer, and a poem.

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone -
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
of every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance -
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love -
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed-
or have you too turned from this world -

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

- Mary Oliver, "New and Selected Poems"  Volume One, Beacon Press, Boston, 1992

So, off I go, to prepare for a long day of work. A day in which I pray I will not go crazy for power and things but reside in gratitude for the gift of life in all the ways that creations manifests our creators love.

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