Gracious 2012 by Drea Jensen
Receptive, perfect and complete: yet able to amplify the environment around us.
May our integrity help us be surrounded by that which brings spiritual joy.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/gracious-2012-drea-jensen.html

The Gesture
By Mary Oliver

On the dog’s ear, a scrap of filmy stuff
turns out to be
a walking stick, that jade insect, this one scarcely sprung
from the pod of the nest,
not an inch long. I could just see
the eyes, elbows, feet nimble under the long shanks.
I could not imagine it could live
in the brisk world, or where it would live, or how. But
I took it
outside and held it up to the red oak that rises
ninety feet into the air, and it lifted its forward-most
pair of arms
with what in anything worth thinking about would have seemed
a graceful and glad gesture; it caught
onto the bark, it hung on; it rested; it began to climb.

Resonance 2013 by Drea Jensen
It is important to remember that though a change may seem small and insignificant,
it can have a large and powerful impact and result.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/resonance-2013-drea-jensen.html

Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

by Mary Oliver

As for life,
I’m humbled,
I’m without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen –
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort –
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

Redwood Forest Mural by 2nd graders and Salmon Creek Middle Schoolers

When I Am Among the Trees

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

by Mary Oliver

Fluent 2012 by Drea Jensen
When we look through watery darkness, we find an expansion of golden light.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/fluent-2012-drea-jensen.html

Remember the Joy
By Drea

Listen intently,
autonomous,
vision obscures blurry eyes.

Feel the pulse of spring,
elongates tentacles,
tendrils of softness.

Tears in our eyes,
gently part trusting ferns,
divulge natural wonders.

Scarcely safe,
bless us with clarity,
our goals converge.

With gratitude we accept,
with innocence we receive,
with purpose we dive, collide.

Remember the joy
of living to smile
upon the calling of a name.

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness
by Mary Oliver

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.

Blossoming 2004 by Drea Jensen
Creation is about breaking down the barriers of different thoughts
and letting them come together in the middle to create something new.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/blossoming-2004-drea-jensen.html

Lilies

I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.

They rise and fall
in the wedge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of cattle,

and have no closets or cupboards
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful

as that idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face

of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself

even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of course he wanted to save someone-

most of all himself.
He wasn’t a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas

it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river –

where the ravishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues-
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.

by Mary Oliver