Poem

The spirit

likes to dress up like this:

ten fingers,

ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest

at night

in the black branches,

in the morning

in the blue branches

of the world.

It could float, of course,

but would rather

plumb rough matter.

Airy and shapeless thing,

it needs

the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,

the oceanic fluids;

it needs the body's world,

instinct

and imagination

and the dark hug of time,

sweetness

and tangibility,

to be understood,

to be more than pure light

that burns

where no one is --

so it enters us --

in the morning

shines from brute comfort

like a stitch of lightning;

and at night

lights up the deep and wondrous

drownings of the body

like a star.

-- Mary Oliver

Surrounded by Wild Turkeys

Little calls as they pass

Through dry forbs and grasses

Under blue oak and gray digger pine

In the warm afternoon of the forest-fire haze;

Twenty or more, long-legged birds

all alike.

So are we, in our soft calling,

passing on through.

Our young, which trail after,

Look just like us.

-- Gary Snyder

The Power of Maples

If you want to live in the country
you have to understand the power of maples.
You have to see them sink their teeth
into the roots of the old locusts.
You have to see them force the sycamores to gasp for air.
You have to see them move their thick hairs into the cellar.
And when you cut your great green shad pole
you have to be ready for it to start sprouting in your hands;
you have to stick it in the ground like a piece of willow;
you have to place your table under its leaves and begin eating.

-- Gerald Stern

"A World without Objects Is a Sensible Emptiness"

The tall camels of the spirit

Steer for their deserts, passing the last groves loud

With the sawmill shrill of the locust, to the whole honey of the arid

Sun. They are slow, proud,

And move with a stilted stride

To the land of the sheer horizon, hunting Traherne's

Sensible emptiness, there where the brain's lantern-slide

Revels in vast returns.

O connoisseurs of thirst,

Beasts of my soul who long to learn to drink

Of pure mirage, those prosperous islands are accurst

That shimmer on the brink

Of absence; auras, lustres,

And all the shinings need to be shaped and borne.

Think of those painted saints, capped by the early masters

With bright, jauntily-worn

Aureate plates, or even

Merry-go-round rings. Turn, O turn

From the fine sleights of the sand, from the long empty oven

Where flames in flamings burn

Back to the trees arrayed

In bursts of glare, to the halo-dialing run

Of the country creeks, and the hills' bracken tiaras made

Gold in the sunken sun,

Wisely watch for the sight

Of the supernova burgeoning over the barn,

Lampshine blurred in the steam of beasts, the spirit's right

Oasis, light incarnate.

-- Richard Wilbur

Patience

What is the good life now? Why,

look here, consider

the moon's white crescent

rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle --

the shining eye
that lightens the hills
that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere
and leaped the running creeks.

There wasn't
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart

as another good idea.
I say this
as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down to the waters

that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.


-- Mary Oliver

Brown Gold

The time of brown gold comes softly.
Oat shocks are alive in brown gold belts,
the short and shambling oat shocks
sit on the stubble and straw.

The timothy hay, the fodder corn, the cabbage
and the potatoes, across their leaves are
footsteps.

There is a bold green up over the cracks in
the corn rows where the crickets go criss-
cross errands, where the bugs carry packages.

Flutter and whir, you birdies, you newcomers
in lines and sashes, tellers of harvest
weather on the way, belts of brown gold
coming softly.

It is very well the old-time streamers take
up the old-time gold haze against the western
timber line.

It is the old time again when months and birds
tell each other, "Oh, very well," and repeat it
where the fields and the timber lines meet
in belts of brown gold hazes, "Oh very
well, Oh very well."

-- Carl Sandburg

The Cow in Apple Time

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

-- Robert Frost