The insistent voices of brilliant flowers, cool waters calling us for a swim, horizon-to-horizon blue skies, and a bit of thunder. Summer is here to tickle our senses!

Mary Oliver

"In Blackwater Woods"

​

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

 against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

"Clearing"

Martha Postlewaite

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose.

Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life

and wait there patiently,

until the song that is your life

falls into your own cupped hands

and you recognize and greet it.

Only then will you know how to give yourself

to this world

so worthy of rescue.