Emily Brisse

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,    or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance    and comfort. Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays    carp and whistle all day in the branches, without     the push of the wind.  But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing     for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen  and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage     of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.  Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a     little sunshine, a little rain.  Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from     one boot to another -- why don't you get going?  For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.  And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists     of idleness, I don...

Every year we have been witness to it: how the world descends into a rich mash, in order that it may resume. And therefore who would cry out to the petals on the ground to stay, knowing as we must, how the vivacity of  what was  is married to the vitality of  what will be? I don't say it's easy, but what else will do if the love one claims to have for the world be true? So let us go on, cheerfully enough, this and every crisping day, though the sun be swinging east, and the ponds be cold and black, and the sweets of the year be doomed. -- by Mary Oliver

On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs; By snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing Like children for their sire to walk abroad! But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines; And what I dream of are the patient deer Who stand on legs like reeds and drink that wind; - They are what saves the world: who choose to grow Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor. -- By Mary Oliver

After rain after many days without rain, it stays cool, private and cleansed, under the trees, and the dampness there, married now to gravity, falls branch to branch, leaf to leaf, down to the ground where it will disappear—but not, of course, vanish except to our eyes. The roots of the oaks will have their share, and the white threads of the grasses, and the cushion of moss; a few drops, round as pearls, will enter the mole's tunnel; and soon so many small stones, buried for a thousand years, will feel themselves being touched. — Mary Oliver