Poems for Thought...

At the risk of posting twice in close succession about poetry (I could lose the few readers I have), I feel that I have to give you (and me) a little more Mary Oliver.

These are excerpts of simple poems that say so much. 

From "The Journey"

You strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do,
determined to save
the only life you could save.

and from "The Summer Day"

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

I have been thinking of the last two lines a lot today. I know that I won't be a through hiker on many of the extended trails I read and write about, because I crave creature comforts and good food at the end of the day. However, I would love to experience once, just once before everything is said and done, the following - from Sleeping In The Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she 
took me back so tenderly, arranging 
her dark skirts, her pockets 
full of lichens and seeds. I slept 
as never before, a stone 
on the riverbed, nothing 
between me and the white fire of the stars 
but my thoughts, and they floated 
light as moths among the branches 
of the perfect trees. All night 
I heard the small kingdoms breathing 
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night 
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling 
with a luminous doom. By morning 
I had vanished at least a dozen times 
into something better.

The pictures? The Bruce Trail and Algonquin Park - tamed wildernesses!!

Have a poetic day!!