On reading Mary Oliver

May 22nd, 2020

I breakfast with Mary Oliver

and one sentence she writes

out of the vast and beautiful picture

she paints with words

takes me back years, into another world -

to when we were young

and tending the orchard

with all the other veterans

on Fairview Heights........

and the children were so contained

in our lives - school buses and bicycles,

picnics on the big rock,

listening to the Night Hawks

as they break the evening air

with their cries and the clap of their wings

Such wonderful memories -

did we realize at the time that we were

manufacturing these beautiful memories

 so they would sit beside us

when we were ancient

sipping our morning coffee and

losing ourselves in the words of the poet.