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 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.
