Tag: Devotions

For years, every morning, I drank
from Blackwater Pond.
It was flavored with oak leaves and also, no doubt,
the feet of ducks.

And always it assuaged me
from the dry bowl of the very far past.

What I want to say is
that the past is the past,
and the present is what your life is,
and you are capable
of choosing what that will be
darling citizen.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,

and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.

("Mornings at Blackwater", Mary Oliver, printed in Devotions, 2017)

After the wind-bruised sea
  furrowed itself back 
    into the folds of blue, I found
       in the black wrack

a shell called the Neptune - 
  tawny and white
    spherical,
       with a tail

and a tower
  and a dark door,
    and all of it
       no larger

than my fist.
  It looked, you might say, 
    very expensive.
       I thought of its travels

in the Atlantic's
  wind-pounded bowl
    and wondered
       that it was still intact.

Ah yes, there was
  that door
    that held only the eventual, inevitable
       emptiness.

...

There's that - there's always that.
  Still, what a house
    to leave behind!
       I held it

like the wisest of books
  and imagined
    its travels toward my hand.
       And now, your hand.

("The Gift", Mary Oliver, printed in Devotions, 2017)