the heart-shackles are not, as you think,

death, illness, pain,

unrequited hope, not loneliness, but

lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,

selfishness

---

When I first found you I was

filled with light, now the darkness grows

and it is filled with crooked things, bitter

and weak, each one bearing my name.

---

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

---

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

into the world of the invisible,

the inscrutable and the everlasting.

---

I had such a longing for virtue, for company.

I wanted Christ to be as close as the cross I wear. ...

...I prayed, oh Lord, let me be something

useful and unpretentious...

Lord, let me be the flower, even a tare; or a sparrow.

Or the smallest bright stone in a ring worn by someone

brave and kind, whose name I will never know.

---

Help me to hear and to hold

in all dearness those exacting and wonderful

words of our Lord Christ Jesus, saying:

Follow me.

---

God, once he is in your heart,

is everywhere--

---

Everywhere I go I am

treated like royalty, which I am not. I thirst and

am given water. My eyes thirst and I am given

the white lilies on the black water. My heart

sings but the apparatus of singing doesn't convey

half what it feels and means.

I always find my own soul looking up at me when I read Mary Oliver. I always leave with deep breathing and squared shoulders and eager eyes.