Can't think of a better way to start the New Year than with a poem that thanks the Lord.
Mary Oliver looks on the world around with grateful eyes, and finds words to articulate the patience of contentment, trust that is more than naivete, and the surprise of enjoyment in ordinary things.
Matins
Now we are awake
and now we are come together
and now we are thanking the Lord.
This is easy
for the Lord is everywhere.
He is in the water and the air.
He is in the very walls.
He is around us and in us.
He is the floor on which we kneel.
We make our songs for him
as sweet as we can
for his goodness,
and lo, he steps into the song
and out of it, having blessed it,
having recognized our intention,
having awakened us, who thought we were awake,
a second time,
having married us to the air and the water,
having lifted us in intensity,
having lowered us in beautiful amiability,
having given us
each other,
and the weeds, dogs, cities, boats, dreams
that are the world.
Mary Oliver, What Do We Know. Poems and Prose Poems (De Capo Press: Cambridge MA, 2002), 51.
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