Felicity

by Mary Oliver

There is nothing more pathetic than caution when headlong might save a life, even, possibly, your own.

Do the Trees Speak? Do the trees speak back to the wind when the wind offers some invitational comment? As some of us do, do they also talk to the sun? I believe so, and if such belief need rest on evidence, let me just say, Sometimes it’s an earful. But there’s more. If you can hear the trees in their easy hours of course you can also hear them later, crying out at the sawmill.

If you’re John Muir you want trees to live among. If you’re Emily, a garden will do. Try to find the right place for yourself. If you can’t find it, at least dream of it. •

In all the works of Beethoven, you will not find a single lie.

Yesterday the wildest storm I ever witnessed flew past west to east, a shaggy howling sky-beast flinging hail even as lightning printed out its sizzling unreadable language followed by truly terrible laughter.

Poems arrive ready to begin. Poets are only the transportation.

This morning the redbirds’ eggs have hatched and already the chicks are chirping for food. They don’t know where it’s coming from, they just keep shouting, “More! More!” As to anything else, they haven’t had a single thought. Their eyes haven’t yet opened, they know nothing about the sky that’s waiting. Or the thousands, the millions of trees. They don’t even know they have wings. And just like that, like a simple neighborhood event, a miracle is taking place.