Mary Oliver Monday - Morning Poem

MORNING POEM
by Mary Oliver from New and Selected Poems:  Volume One  (Beacon Press)

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


I'm usually one of those people who, as Mary Oliver describes in this poem, happily swims through the day.  Lately, however, I feel like I've been trudging, stumbling, lumbering along the path.  My imagination isn't flitting around from idea to idea like a sprightly sparrow or curious magpie; it's either pulling apart the past or looming over the future like a bird of prey. 

I try to remind myself to listen for what the beast inside me is shouting it wants and needs, to look for the prayers heard and answered.  The world isn't just created every morning, it's created every minute. 


How are you daring to be happy?  Daring to pray?