Category Archives: Uncategorized

Deliverance from Time

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Mosaic 2012 by Drea Jensen Even the most different of things, shape, size, etc, can come together to form something beautiful. http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/mosaic-2012-drea-jensen.html

Mosaic 2012 by Drea Jensen
Even the most different of things, shape, size, etc, can come together to form something beautiful.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/mosaic-2012-drea-jensen.html

Circles

By Mary Oliver

In the morning the blue heron is busy

stepping, slowly, around the edge of the

pond. He is tall and shining. His wings, folded

against his body, fit so neatly they

make of him, when he lifts his shoulders and begins to rise

into the air, a great surprise. Also

he carries so light the terrible sword-beak. Then

he is gone over the trees.

I am so happy to be alive in this world

I would like to live forever, but I am

content not to. Seeing what I have seen

has filled me; believing what I believe

has filled me.

The first words of this page are

hardly thought of when the bird

circles back over the trees; it floats down

like an armful of blue flowers, a bundle of light

coming to refresh itself again in the black water, and I think:

maybe it is or it isn’t the same bird-maybe it’s

the first one’s child, or the child of its child.

What I mean is, our deliverance from Time

and the continuance, if we only steward them well,

of earthly things. So maybe it’s myself still standing here, or

someone else, like myself hot with the joy of this world, and

filled with praise.

The Stars Sing

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Trinity 2012 by Drea Jensen The space that lies between objects is often just as interesting as the objects themselves, just like the journey can be better than the destination. http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/trinity-2012-drea-jensen.html

Trinity 2012 by Drea Jensen
The space that lies between objects is often just as interesting as the objects themselves, just like the journey can be better than the destination.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/trinity-2012-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.

 

Beyond Sorrow

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

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

Over the Hill She Came

By Mary Oliver

Over the hill she came, her long legs very scarcely

touching the ground, the cups of her ears listening, with obvious pleasure,

to the wind as it stroked the dark arms of the pines;

once or twice she lingered and browsed some moist patch

of half-wrapped leaves, then came along to where I was-or nearly-

and then, among the thousand bodies of the trees, their splashes of light and their shadows, she was gone;

and I, who was heavy that day with thoughts as small as my whole life would ever be, and especially

compared to the thousand shining trees, gave thanks to whatever sent her in my direction that I might see, and strive to be,

as clearly she was, beyond sorrow, soft-lipped angel walking on air.

Nothing Playing

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Freshen the Flowers, She Said

by Mary Oliver

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain
was tender,
and took out the tattered and cut each stem
on a slant,
trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all –
roses, delphiniums, daisies, iris, lilies,
and more whose names I don’t know, in bright new water –
gave them

a bounce upward at the end to let them take
their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,
the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,
perhaps fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of music
with nothing playing.

 

Small Mountain

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Climbing Pinnacle

By Mary Oliver 

It is only a small mountain

as mountains go,

too stubby for any map.

But still, in my boots,

I climbed and climbed until at last there was nothing

but the blue sky

and a single final pasture

and a few not-very -tall trees-

 

and from under these came running

a fawn on its tumbly legs,

the sound of its wanting falling

from its pink, pursed mouth.

But I knew the rule:

Don’t touch it, or the doe

might never come back!

So what could I do? It almost

reached me

before I slung myself into a tree.

 

And there I was

higher even than the mountain,

perched for hours

while beauty held me tightly…

I didn’t move

until the doe came back,

angry and snorting

and she and the fawn tiptoed away.

 

And so I was free.

And there was nothing to do,

as there is never anything to do,

after rapture,

but to swing down

bough after bough-

to hurry down, field after field,

through the pale twilight,

to be greeted by the people

who loved me, far below.

Grandmother’s Pleasure

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The Bleeding-heart
by Mary Oliver
from New and Selected Poems
Volume Two

I know a bleeding-heart plant that has thrived
for sixty years if not more, and has never
missed a spring without rising and spreading
itself into a glossy bush, with many small red
hearts dangling. Don’t you think that deserves
a little thought? The woman who planted it
has been gone for a long time, and everyone
who saw it in that time has also died or moved
away and so, like so many stories, this one can’t
get finished properly. Most things that are
important, have you noticed, lack a certain
neatness. More delicious, anyway, is to
remember my grandmother’s pleasure when
the dissolve of winter was over and the green
knobs appeared and began to rise, and to cre-
ate their many hearts. One would say she was
a simple woman, made happy by simple
things. I think this was true. And more than
once, in my long life, I have wished to be her.

 

 

Infinitely Inventive

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Jazz 2012 by Drea Jensen If you take the time to look or listen through the things that are seemingly hectic, you can find the true beauty that they hold.  http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/jazz-2012-drea-jensen.html

Jazz 2012 by Drea Jensen
If you take the time to look or listen through the things that are seemingly hectic, you can find the true beauty that they hold.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/jazz-2012-drea-jensen.html

The Kitten

More amazed than anything
I took the perfectly black
stillborn kitten
with the one large eye
in the center of its small forehead
from the house cat’s bed
and buried it in a field
behind the house.

I suppose I could have given it
to a museum,
I could have called the local
newspaper.

But instead I took it out into the field
and opened the earth
and put it back
saying, it was real,
saying, life is infinitely inventive,
saying, what other amazements
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes,

I think I did right to go out alone
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

By Mary Oliver

HELP ALICE DONOVAN FIGHT LEUKEMIA

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Daydream 2012 by Drea Jensen Often, the most wonderful emotions in our lives come from the most unexpected situations. http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/daydream-2012-drea-jensen.htm

Daydream 2012 by Drea Jensen
This painting has been donated to a raffle dedicated to helping Alice.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/daydream-2012-drea-jensen.htm

HELP ALICE DONOVAN FIGHT LEUKEMIA
A bone marrow transplant is Alice’s best chance for a cure.  Nobody in Alice’s family is a match, so the Donovans’ have arranged a bone marrow donor drive with “Be the Match” (http://www.bethematchfoundation.org/goto/hopeforalice) to help find a match on:
Saturday, January 4, 2014, 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Tarsier Room at O’Reilly Media
1005 Gravenstein Hwy. North, Sebastopol
The test to see if you are a match is a simple, quick, and painless cheek swab.  And if you go on to donate, 75% of the time it is a nonsurgical outpatient procedure.
If you cannot come to the donor drive on January 4, you can also sign up online at http://join.bethematch.org/hopeforalice and ‘Be the Match’ will send you a simple kit to take your own swab that you can mail back in for testing.
Donors must be between the ages of 18 and 44 and in good health.
Please consider getting tested to ‘Be the Match’ for Alice!

Inseparable

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Sanctuary 2012 by Drea Jensen The natural world holds a temple, a safe place for growth. A healing shelter for seeds to germinate and take root. http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/sanctuary-2012-drea-jensen.html

Sanctuary 2012 by Drea Jensen
The natural world holds a temple, a safe place for growth.
A healing shelter for seeds to germinate and take root.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/sanctuary-2012-drea-jensen.html

 

Gannets

by Mary Oliver

I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy–
even though the sea is riled and boiling
and gray with fog
and the fish
are nowhere to be seen,
they fall, they explode into the water
like white gloves,
then they vanish,
then they climb out again,
from the cliff of the wave,
like white flowers–
and still I think
that nothing in this world moves
but as a positive power–
even the fish, finning down into the current
or collapsing
in the red purse of the beak,
are only interrupted from their own pursuit
of whatever it is
that fills their bellies–
and I say:
life is real,
and pain is real,
but death is an imposter,
and if I could be what once I was,
like the wolf or the bear
standing on the cold shore,
I would still see it–
how the fish simply escape, this time,
or how they slide down into a black fire
for a moment,
then rise from the water inseparable
from the gannets’ wings.

Visited This World

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Kiva 2011 by Drea Jensen Every person has creativity in them whether they can see it or not. Some show it on the outside and some keep it hidden, but everyone has the capability of letting it out.  http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/kiva-2011-drea-jensen.html

Kiva 2011 by Drea Jensen
Every person has creativity in them whether they can see it or not. Some show it on the outside and some keep it hidden, but everyone has the capability of letting it out.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/kiva-2011-drea-jensen.html

WHEN DEATH COMES

   When death comes
   like the hungry bear in autumn;
   when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

   to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
   when death comes
   like the measle-pox

   when death comes
   like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

   I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
   what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

   And therefore I look upon everything
   as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
   and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
   and I consider eternity as another possibility,

   and I think of each life as a flower, as common
   as a field daisy, and as singular,

   and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
   tending, as all music does, toward silence,

   and each body a lion of courage, and something
   precious to the earth.

   When it's over, I want to say all my life
   I was a bride married to amazement.
   I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

   When it's over, I don't want to wonder
   if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

   I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
   or full of argument.

   I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ Mary Oliver ~