Fifteen Minutes of Music with Nothing Playing

I stumbled upon Mary Oliver's poetry book - Blue Iris at the bookstore. I sat and drank my hot chocolate and the words. And with moist eyes I found someone who said what I felt. Here are a few of her poems (I dark blued my favorite parts)

Freshen the Flowers, She Said

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain
was tender,
and took out the tattered and cut each stem on a slant,
trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all-
roses, delphiniums, daisies, iris, lilies,
and more whose names I don't know, in bright new water-
gave them

a bounce upward at the end to let them take
their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,
the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,
perhaps fifteen minutes.
Fifteen minutes of music
with nothing playing.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Roses, Late Summer

What happens
to the leaves after
they turn red and golden and fall
away? What happens

to the singing birds
when they can't sing
any longer? What happens
to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any
personal heaven
for any of us?
Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,
will call to us, meaning us?
Beyond the trees
the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.
So they never seem to vanish, they are always there
in the blossom of light
that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.
And over one more set of hills,
along the sea,
the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.
If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tress
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Understand from the first this certainty.
Butterflies don't write books, neither do lilies or violets. Which doesn't mean they don't know, in their own way, what they are. That they don't know they are alive-that they don't feel, that action upon which all consciousness sits, lightly or heavily. Humility is the prize of the leaf-world. Vainglory is the bane of us, the humans.

Anyhow, don't you love her (I'm not really the best with poems but I know I like this). Perhaps because I too, think that the flowers have figured it out - if only we could learn from them. You know - the lilies of the field - adorned in more beauty than we could ever create - satisfied just being. I have often said that we are worthy of being loved just for being - after all we are human beings not human doings. And if we could find the quiet confidence this knowledge brings we would be truly happy.

(Art Work ~ Denise Nielsen)