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Sunday, November 10, 2013

Your Sunday Poem

This by Mary Oliver from her lovely, lovely 2012 collection, "A Thousand Mornings," (Penguin, 2012) available in paperback, so get down to your local bookstore.  Christmas is coming and your friends deserve a nice book of poems for the new year and this one's a gem.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been
witness to it: how the
world descends

into a rich mash, in order that it may resume.
And therefore
who would cry out

to the petals on the ground
to stay,
knowing as we must,
how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?
I don't say
it's easy, but
what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world
be true?
So let us go on, cheerfully enough,
this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,
and the ponds be cold and black,
and the sweets of the year be doomed.




5 comments:

Alon Perlman said...

A seasonal dirge, a cyclical momento mori.
Thanks.

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

Thanks from me too - and the photo is gorgeous!

Churadogs said...

Yeah, the Rogers Red grapevine is starting to blaze now. Went to the Native Plant Society's sale last Sat and discovered it's a Ca. native. Which was a happy surprise. It's a vigorous grower, has a stereotypical, picture-perfect looking soft green leaf in the summer, then its blazing glory in the fall.

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

I had no idea that there were native grapevines! Well, you learn something every day!

Churadogs said...

Yeah, that was a surprise. I have another type of grapevine, much smaller leaves, much less lush growth, and thought that was the native one. But, no, the Roger's is native for sure.