Kindred Spirits: Mary Oliver

…My back to hickory, I sit

Hours in the damp wood, listening.

It never ebbs.

Its music is the shelf for other sounds:

Birds, wind in the leaves, some tumbled stones.

After awhile

I forget things, as I have forgotten time.

Death, love, ambition-the things that drive

Like pumps in the big rivers.

                                    My heart

Is quieted, at rest. I scarcely feel it.

Little rivers, running everywhere,

Have blunted the knife. Cool, cool,

They wash above the bones.

-Creeks by Mary Oliver

Spring has finally sprung here in New England, and I am once again back outside allowing the sounds of nature to ground me in the here and now.

Like this 81 year-old American Pulitzer Prize winning poet, being enveloped by the natural world is sometimes the only way I can forget things, quiet and rest my heart, and blunt the knife.

Infinite gratitude for this kindred spirit.