iv_ever_dumbening_mary_oliver frAnk and so i try to think of another question to ask you, curious of mary oliver, and in my desire to discover who she is, i am like the child given a certain taste, smell, sound, touch for the very first time. and i am in love with these words from a pulitzer prize winning poet, barely able to believe someone can capture my thoughts, images, and favourite things in a way i could only dream of doing. thank you for mentioning her name in your listing, "seek." doing so, you were unaware the effect it would have on me. yet, isn't this the beauty of life itself? sharing knowledge, giving to others the treasures that we have felt, seen, experienced? by improving our lives, we improve others. "you do not have to be good. you do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." "tell me your despair, yours, and i will tell you mine. meanwhile the world goes on." whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting, over and over announcing your place in the family of things." i had her words sliding about in my heart as i walked to the horse barn, stepping in the melting snow, slush, mud, and sleepy grass. i could hear birds calling, their distant voices echoing through the thousands of bare trees and i nearly burst with happiness. it was a mundane act, a daily chore, but the beauty was now visible, the world was calling me, offering itself, and i had the right, the priviledge to do with it what i wanted. tell me, what effect has her writing had upon you? why did you include her? 020111 ... ever dumbening If a leaf, upon reaching the earth, happens to touch another leaf, should there be rejoicing, tears, puzzlement? So why then when you happen to quote Wild Geese does my vision smear and my head rattle? I have probably read that poem fifty times and sifted through the traces it leaves in my brain a hundred times more. "Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes" In a period of non-communication between myself and Colleen, a period where we were still trying to maintain a bond even as _the_ bond was clearly broken, she wrote out this poem on a small card. She dropped it into a small brown envelope and into my mailbox, her work place to this day only six minutes from my apartment here in Berkeley. With the poem were simply the words: "Just a wave from me to you across the river of our silence, hopefully not stepping in muddy water, to remind you that you are always with me. With Love, Colleen." We reestablished contact, then ceased it again. She has fallen in love twice and married. The voice of the woman who taught me more than I ever imagined possible is now replaced by the voice of Mary Oliver. Through Oliver's voice, she _is_ always with me, reassuring me, encouraging me, sitting with me. To move forward from past failures, to in fact not view them as failures, one must carefully reflect on what was and see very clearly what _is_ now, what is beautiful now, as a result. Morning Poem Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches-- and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead-- if it's all you can do to keep on trudging-- there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted-- each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray. Through Mary Oliver, I am able to soften my bitter heart, to see joy in defeat, to _truly_ see where yang softens to yin and surges back again. Yes, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer I continue on with _my_ Dream Work. The leaves piles up, my friend. We watch, smiling. 020111 what's it to you? who go blather from