Lenten Grace — Some Vast, Incredible Gift

 

photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Josh Scholten
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Nate Gibson
photo by Emily Dieleman
photo by Emily Dieleman

In trees still dripping night some nameless birds
Woke, shook out their arrowy wings, and sang,
Slowly, like finches sifting through a dream.
The pink sun fell, like glass, into the fields.

Two chestnuts, and a dapple gray,
Their shoulders wet with light, their dark hair streaming,
Climbed the hill. The last mist fell away.

And under the trees, beyond time’s brittle drift,
I stood like Adam in his lonely garden
On that first morning, shaken out of sleep,
Rubbing his eyes, listening, parting the leaves,
Like tissue on some vast, incredible gift.

~ Mary Oliver – from “Morning In a New Land”

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