Mary Oliver passed away yesterday at the age of 83. More on Mary Oliver in the NYT with this link: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/obituaries/mary-oliver-dead.html
At the End of the Year- Blessings by John O'Donohue
An Apple Tree Was Concerned- A Poem by Hafez
An apple tree was concerned
about a late frost and losing its gifts
that would help feed a poor family close by.
Can't the clouds be generous with what falls from them?
Can't the sun ration itself with precision?
They can speak, trees,
they can say the sweetest things
but it takes special ears to hear them,
ears that have listened to people
with great care.
A Blessing For the New Year- Beannacht by John O'Donohue
The Sycamore by Wendell Berry
In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.