I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see and hear and I will praise it…
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again…
~Mary Oliver from “Red Bird”
Category: wildflowers
Piecemeal
Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field’s edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.
~Richard Wilbur from “Exeunt”
Backlit
Even the plainest among us become beautiful when bathed in the right light…
The Ripening Country-side
This was one of those perfect days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.
–Â Â Sarah Orne Jewett
The Ease That Belongs to Simplicity
There may be restrictions to a summer’s happiness,
but the ease that belongs to simplicity
is charming enough to make up for
whatever a simple life may lack…
~Sarah Orne Jewett from The Country of the Pointed Firs
Solace for the Ordinary
Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity.
~John Ruskin
Weeds are flowers too,
once you get to know them.
~A.A. Milne
Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful;
they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
~Luther Burbank
they are sunshine, food and medicine for the soul.
~Luther Burbank
Be Idle and Blessed
Who made the world?
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 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?
~Mary Oliver from “The Summer Day”
In the Clover
Lightly it flew to the pleasant home
Of the flower most truly fair,
On Clover’s breast he softly lit,
And folded his bright wings there.
‘Dear flower,’ the butterfly whispered low,
‘Long hast thou waited for me;
Now I am come, and my grateful love
Shall brighten thy home for thee;
Thou hast loved and cared for me, when alone,
Hast watched o’er me long and well;
And now will I strive to show the thanks
The poor worm could not tell.
Sunbeam and breeze shall come to thee,
And the coolest dews that fall;
Whate’er a flower can wish is thine,
For thou art worthy all.
~Louisa May Alcott from “Clover-Blossom”
Ache of Memory
Only be it understood,
It shall be no trespassing
If I come again some spring
In the grey disguise of years,
Seeking ache of memory here.
~Robert Frost from “On the Sale of My Farm”
Beholden
“When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields,
consider the orderliness of the world.
Notice something you have never noticed before…
Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings.
A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life.
Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.”
~Mary Oliver from “The Leaf and the Cloud”
Barnstorming 