Bharathi

“What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinishable story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until all ends.

Take your busy heart to the art museum and the
chamber of commerce
but take it also to the forest.
The song you heard singing in the leaf when you
were a child
is singing still.
I am of years lived, so far, seventy-four,
and the leaf is singing still.

(from, “What Can I Say”)”
― Mary Oliver

“Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.”
― Mary Oliver

“I could not be a poet without the natural world. Someone else could. But not me. For me the door to the woods is the door to the temple.”
― Mary Oliver, Upstream: Selected Essays

“Defeat exists but not suffering. A true warrior knows that when he loses a battle, he is improving the skill with which he wields a sword. He will be able to fight more skilfullly next time.”
― Paulo Coelho