Origami 2012 by Drea
Something as simple as folding paper can create beauty.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/origami-2012-drea-jensen.html

Picking Blueberries
by Mary Oliver

Once, in summer,
In the blueberries,
I fell asleep, and woke
When a deer stumbled against me.

I guess
She was so busy with her own happiness
She had grown careless
And was just wandering along

Listening
To the wind as she leaned down
To lip up the sweetness.
So, there we were

With nothing between us
But a few leaves, and the wind’s
Glossy voice
Shouting instructions.

The deer
Backed away finally
And flung up her white tail
And went floating off toward the trees –

But the moment before she did that
Was so wide and so deep
It has lasted to this day;
I have only to think of her –

The flower of her amazement
And the stalled breath of her curiosity,
And even the damp touch of her solicitude
Before she took flight-

To be absent again from this world
And alive, again, in another,
For thirty years
sleepy and amazed,

Rising out of the rough weeds
Listening and looking.
Beautiful girl,
Where are you?

Golden Door 2014 by Drea
A golden door of incandescent brilliance, patience equanimity, and resolute with knowledge and respect.
Radiant life energy to honor limitless love in glorious space.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/golden-door-2014-drea-jensen.html

This World
by Mary Oliver

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

Muse of Fire 2011 By Drea
This painting represents the expression of inspiration and passion that lives in us all.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/muse-of-fire-2011-drea-jensen.html

Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Aperture 2014 by Drea
Celebrate and embrace who you are. Have fun expressing your uniqueness and enjoy life by savoring your dreams.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/aperture-2014-drea-jensen.html

Lead
by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

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

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.

~ from her collection, A Thousand Mornings

Ventral 2012 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/ventral-2012-drea-jensen.html

Reckless Poem

Mary Oliver

Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.

It flows through me
like the blue wave.
Green leaves – you may believe this or not –
have once or twice
emerged from the tips of my fingers

somewhere
deep in the woods,
in the reckless seizure of spring.

Though, of course, I also know that other song,
the sweet passion of one-ness.

Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.

And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand,
I have flown from the other window of myself
to become white heron, blue whale,
red fox, hedgehog.
Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower!
Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched
among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.

Autobiographical Incident
By Orion Jensen
I woke up as my alarm buzzed in my ear and my mom said, “Orion, get up and shut that alarm off.”
“Give me a second,” I yelled so she could hear me. I rolled out of bed half dressed and I felt the cold nip on my body as I walked out the door. My mom was in the kitchen and from the smell of cinnamon I could tell that she was cooking French toast, which was normal for my house.
“Mom,” I said, “I’m going to take a shower OK?” That ended with what most teenagers do to get ready for school: shower, deodorant, get dressed, that sort of stuff.
As I walked into the living room I slipped on my sandals and walked my dog down the street. I heard nothing but a few crickets and an owl. As I walked up the long driveway back to my house I realized how gloomy it was. It was dark and silent. Well, as silent as it gets at 6:30.
I walked into the house and felt a wave of heat that washed over me. As I walked down the small stairs from the living room to the kitchen table with the French toast, I sat down and started getting ready to eat.
My mom called out from her room, “Orion eat your food and get ready to go. We leave in 20 minutes.”
“OK,” I said.
Just before I started on my French toast the phone rang. I thought nothing of it and could hear as my mom said in a cheery voice, “Oh, hi Allison.”
Then I heard her sob and I ran into her room with my dog close at my heels.
“What’s wrong?” I said is I hugged my mom trying to comfort her .
Through her sobs I heard, “Cameron…died.”
I felt the tears brim over my eyes and as they rolled down my cheeks I hugged my mom. Sadness spilled out of my body and with my dog next me I sat there and cried.
This day, I don’t remember anything after that I can tell you. I can’t tell you if I cried my eyes out or sat there numb and so that’s all I remember.
I woke up the next day and went to school with a hallow heart.

Curiosity 2012 by Drea
Remember the importance and value of innovative creativity.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/curiosity-2012-drea-jensen.html

Evidence
By Mary Oliver

I.

Where do I live? If I had no address, as many people
do not, I could nevertheless say that I lived in the
same town as the lilies of the field, and the still
waters.

Spring, and all through the neighborhood now there are
strong men tending flowers.

Beauty without purpose is beauty without virtue. But
all beautiful things, inherently, have this function –
to excite the viewers toward sublime thought. Glory
to the world, that good teacher.

Among the swans there is none called the least, or
the greatest.

I believe in kindness. Also in mischief. Also in
singing, especially when singing is not necessarily
prescribed.

As for the body, it is solid and strong and curious
and full of detail; it wants to polish itself; it
wants to love another body; it is the only vessel in
the world that can hold, in a mix of power and
sweetness: words, song, gesture, passion, ideas,
ingenuity, devotion, merriment, vanity, and virtue.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

2.

There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.

How old pain, for example, can stall us at the threshold of function….

Still friends, consider stone, that is without the fret of gravity, and water that is without anxiety.

And the pine trees that never forget their recipe for renewal.

And the female wood duck who is looking this way and that way for her children. And the snapping turtle who is looking this way and that way also. This is the world.

And consider, always, every day, the determination of the grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.

3.

I ask you again: if you have not been enchanted by this adventure–your life–what would do for you?

And, where are you, with your ears bagged down as if with packets of sand? Listen. We all have much more listening to do. Tear the sand away. And listen. The river is singing. …

For myself, I have walked in these woods for
More than forty years, and I am the only
thing, it seems, that is about to be used up.
Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the
Foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into some
fresh morning and look around and hear myself
crying out: “The house of money is falling! The house of money is falling! The weeds are rising! The weeds are rising!”

Acquiesce 2014 by Drea
“Last night the rain spoke to me slowly, saying, what joy to come falling out of the brisk cloud, to be happy again in a new way on the earth!” ~ Mary Oliver
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/acquiesce-2014-drea-jensen.html

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
by Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,
what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again
in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,
smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches
and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing
under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,
and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment
my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars
and the soft rain –
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.

Four Sacred Directions 2002 by Drea
Life is an ever changing thing, be it seasons, direction, or age.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/four-sacred-directions-2002-drea-jensen.html

Red Bird Explains Himself
By Mary Oliver

“Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus the wilderness bloomed there, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? For truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this body work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”