A Thousand Mornings

by Mary Oliver

Then I step out into the garden, where the gardener, who is said to be a simple man, is tending his children, the roses.

As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.

For some things there are no wrong seasons.

When a man says he hears angels singing he hears angels singing.

Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?

It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood.

Truly I try to be good but sometimes a person just has to break out and act like the wild and springy thing one used to be.

It’s impossible not to remember wild and want it back.

This is spring, by the rattled pond, in the shambled woods, as spring has always been and always will be no matter what we do in the suburbs.

Long neck, long tail. Tongue on fire. Heart of stone.

No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution to gravity and a single shape.