Arrival 2002 by Drea Jensen
The blue triangles and trapezoids represent peace and joy, a meditation on color and shape.
A moment of reconciliation when the body and mind relax into spirit.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/arrival-2002-drea-jensen.html

Goldfinches by Mary Oliver

Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument
at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe, or
perhaps just to dip their heads and look at themselves,
and they were having trouble with who should be
first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood in
the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the old
holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or are
these birds really just that, bells come to us~come to
this road in America~let us bow our heads and
remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer.
Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a
good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings opening
from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny feet,
all washed, clasping the air.

Honey 2013 by Drea Jensen
May the divine feminine bless us all with her honey bees! http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/honey-2013-drea-jensen.html

Give Way
By Drea

We are often right,
observers search for the observed.

Feel the heat of combustive passion,
connect to our creativity.

Spirit guide us to know,
space give way to timing.

Roots unseen support growth,
the light of passion in our eye.

Find a way to celebrate,
embrace spacious knowing.

Life bring love right to our door,
of the sacrifice made.

Our name spoken remind us
that we embrace this path.

Inspiration 2012 by Drea Jensen
One small stone in a pond can create a ripple as large as the pond,
just like a small idea can grow into a masterpiece.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/inspiration-2012-drea-jensen.html

Meanwhile
By Mary Oliver

Lord, my body is not yet a temple,
But only one of your fair fields.
An empty field that nobody wants, at least not yet.
But even here the lily is somewhere,
Sometimes it lifts its head above the grasses,
The daises, the milkweed, the mallow.

And sometimes, like us, it sleeps, or at least
Leans below the blades of the grasses.
Lord, I live as you have made me to live.
I bite hungrily into the peach and the turnip.
I bite, with sorrow, into the calf and the lamb.
I drink the tears of the clouds.

I praise the leaves of the shrub oaks
And the pine trees in their bold coats.
I listen and give thanks to the catbird and the thrush.
Meanwhile, the fox knows where you are.
The bees leave the swamp azalea and fly straight
To the shadow of your face.

Meanwhile my body is rustic and brash.
The world I live in is hedges, and small blossoms.
Lord, consider me, and my earnest work.
A hut I have made, out of the grasses.
Now I build the door, out of all things brash and rustic.
Day and night it is open.
Have you seen it yet, among the grasses?

How it longs for you?
How it tries to shine, like gold?

Tree of Life 2013 by Drea Jensen
Like trees, we as people are always growing. Though the growth may not be seen such as in height or weight, our hearts and minds will never stop reaching for the sky.
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/tree-of-life-2013-drea-jensen.html

Of Goodness
By Mary Oliver

How good
that the clouds travel, as they do,
like the long dresses of the angels
of our imagination,

or gather in the storm masses, then break
with their gifts of replenishment,
and how good
that the trees shelter the patient birds

in their thick leaves,
and how good that in the field
the next morning
red bird frolics again, his throat full of song,

and how good
that the dark ponds, refreshed,
are holding the white cups of the lilies
so that each is an eye that can look upward,

and how good that the little blue-winged teal
comes paddling among them, as cheerful as ever,

and so on, and so on.

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