After a snowstorm last week, I was walking by the creek and overheard a parent explaining to their child that the water is always flowing under the surface, even when it seems to be frozen solid. As if sensing the kid’s doubtfulness, little further down the path, a thin stream of clear water was bubbling […]
In honor of Mary Oliver’s birthday this weekend, a selection from A Thousand Mornings: Sometimes I spend all day trying to count the leaves on a single tree. To do this I have to climb branch by branch and write down the numbers in a little book. So I suppose, from their point of view, […]
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver It’s easy to breeze right by the most astonishing things. A hawk circling overhead. A couple that has found one another. A caterpillar slinky-ing up a leaf. A bridge that spans a river. A newborn of […]
Years ago, I was in the middle of a complicated business trip, rushing for a connection in a big airport in a town where I knew no one. As I was shuffling along the moving walkway, willing the standers in front of me to lean out of the way so I could rush by, […]
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver It’s a funny phrase, and apt: we don’t make attention, or do attention, we pay attention. It often feels like a cost. When we are called to pay attention, it’s because our focus is elsewhere. Pay attention to the algebra […]
Don’t just do something, stand there! Jack Bogle Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver This was a tough week for loss – both the poet Mary Oliver and the investor Jack Bogle. At first glance these seem like people who had little in common: Oliver spent her days in the […]
Pay Attention. Be Astonished. Tell about it. – Mary Oliver, Instructions for Living a Life Dear Honeybees, I’ve been unplugged this past week, which brought all sorts of attention and astonishment. There will be lots to tell in weeks and months and years ahead; for now, here is a tiny morning video […]
Life has such surprising left hooks sometimes, which is one reason I love the poetry of Mary Oliver. Here we are, strolling in a field, mooning over a glorious grasshopper, and then POW! She asks, Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Much as it stings, it is the POW that makes the […]
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? Mary Oliver’s new collection Upstream has sent me spiraling back through her prior work. Fans will know the line above at a glance – it is from the stellar Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches, pasted in entirety below, with all […]