I have found myself thinking of summer fields. Fields full of flowers— poppies or lupines. Or, here, fields where the roses hook into the dunes, and their increase is manyfold. All summer they are red and pink and white tents of softness and nectar, which wafts and hangs everywhere— a sweetness so palpable and excessive that, before it, I’m struck, I’m taken, I’m conquered; I’m washed into it, as though it was a river, full of dreaming and idleness— I drop to the sand, I can’t move; I am restless no more; I am replete, supine, finished, filled to the last edges with an immobilizing happiness.
~ Mary Oliver, from “Owls” in Upstream: Selected Essays
Photo: Bart Ceuppens (Belgium) with Poppies (via drxgonfly)
She is divine! Her words always move me. 👏
Yes!
Magnifique !
It is!
She truly understands the connection we are meant to have with our Mother.
Yes, and at such a deeper level than most of us Humans…
Her words are as redolent as the scent of the flowers..wow, I love her
So agree. She’s manages to generate that soft “wow” even after reading the passage several times. Wow.
There is a way in which her words bring us right down to our center. Peaceful, gentle. I love her. Thanks for starting our Sunday with this. Happy day, David.
So true Roseanne. She’s amazing… Makes me feel like:
“She had this way of magnifying one’s simple words and experiences. One would hand her a bit of information as dull as a lump of lead. She would hand it back glittering like diamonds. I always felt on leaving her that I had drunk two glasses of an excellent champagne. She was a life-enhancer. That was one of her own favorite phrases.”
~ Harold Nicolson, on Virginia Woolf, featured in Virginia Woolf: A Biography
or
“I enunciated. The more I pronounced the words, the more the words lost all of their meaning. Say anything too much, and soon language becomes pummeled nothing. Totally estranging, inadequate, and without substitute. Your tongue may as well be numb.”
~ Durga Chew-Bose, from “Heart Museum” in Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2017)
Yes, exactly.
immobilizing happiness. yes.
Especially that, on this Sunday morning. Yes.
I love Mary Oliver. Her poetry is magic and pure wisdom. Thank you for sharing David!
Me too Albina. Thank you.
Lovely, pal, and spot on, as Oliver always is….
She is…
my sentiments exactly…his blood on the page.
She does draw me into such a wonderful place. This glimpse of sun, and with warmth around the corner does open up appreciations of the summer to come 💛
Sure does Val….
superb writing matched with that photo. loved them both.