Come Visit. I live in a house near the corner I have named Gratitude.

Mary Oliver said she wakes every morning to the dawn and give thanks for another day, eats breakfast, takes a walk with her dog Percy, and works for 3-4 hours, at which point she is tired.

This life seems about perfect to me.



Such Gifts

The Place I Want to Get Back To
is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay,
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground , like that
,so quiet, as if asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named
Gratitude.

(from Thirst)

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around youkept shouting
their bad advice--though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles."Mend my life!"each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones. But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--determined to save
the only life you could save.