A New Look and Landscape

[I decided I wanted a new landscape for the blog so thus the changes to the design and color scheme.  Now on to your regularly scheduled poem . . .]

LANDSCAPE

by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems, Volume One (Beacon Press)

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that

they have no tongues, could lecture

all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience?  Isn’t it clear

the black oaks along the path are standing

as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around

the pond, thinking:  if the doors of my heart

ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive.  And now

the crows break off from the rest of the darkness

and burst up into the sky—as though

all night they had thought of what they would like

their lives to be, and imagined

their strong, thick wings.

Mary Oliver is another poet who notices things.  Her poems are practices in mindfulness-- lessons in how the landscape around her sheds light on the landscape of her soul.  Her starting point is a state of attentiveness. Billy Collins reminds us that one day we will die, so now is the time to pay attention, Mary Oliver reminds us that when we stop paying attention, we cease being alive.  Open eyes and open hearts are our natural state of being.  Like the crows, however, some nights I find myself thinking that I'd like to be more mindful, more attentive, more awake . . . and hopefully in the morning I am. 

What lessons are you learning from the landscape around you?

What is keeping the doors of your heart open in this moment?