One Or Two Things – Mary Oliver
1
Don’t bother me
I’ve just
been born.

2
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower

3
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things; I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

5
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

6
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

7
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

 

? what is your deep memory of pleasure

? what is your cutting knowledge of pain

>>> let the butterfly’s words linger with you today…

for all of our searching, 

for all of our longing to emerge, 

to develop, to rise. 

can we just take a moment, 

to listen to the

dog, the crow,

the frog,

the butterfly.

lay low and listen.

can we seize the ‘long delicious moments’

the pleasure and the pain.

can we hold it all in tension,

and each day,

rise again.

and may we trust that new life is growing.