Posted by fayeroe on April 11, 2009, at 22:34:58
My favourite poet
Mary Oliver
Lilies
I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderfulas the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green faceof the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myselfeven in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of coarse he wanted to save someone--most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideasit would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river--
where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues--
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.
poster:fayeroe
thread:890045
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20090331/msgs/890045.html