Here you are, alive …
… Would you like to make a comment?
This morning an excerpt from Mary Oliver’s Long Life: Essays and Other Writings danced into my awareness:
Poets [writers, editors, artists of all stripes, each of us] must read and study, but also they must learn to tilt and whisper, shout or dance, each in his or her own way, or we might just as well copy the old books. But, no, that would never do, for always the new self swimming around in the old world feels itself uniquely verbal. And that is just the point: how the world, moist and bountiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?” This book is my comment.
I don’t always feel myself verbal. Sometimes I go quiet for days, weeks, even months. Sometimes my comments are intensely private, made only to Godde. And sometimes I feel confused, unsure what comment I want to make.
But here I am alive this morning. My world is moist and bountiful in ways I did not expect, and I would like to make this comment:
3 Responses to “Here you are, alive …”
Oh yes.
I’m not at home just now but am hearing (in my heart, my memory) the sound of a new fire in the woodstove (the click of the chimney) and the dripping from the eaves-trough that needs to be fixed, just above my pillow. Almost never silence at my house but small sounds I love.
I love Mary Oliver’s (and David Whyte’s) poetry and writings. I appreciate how Mary Oliver inspires us to draw from within through enticements of Nature (Wild Geese, Sleeping in the Forest…) or as in the writing above, the world around us. Thanks for this. My garden asks for my Comment every morning!