Lightly Child, Lightly.

Posted on by Live & Learn

Here is an amazement –– once I was twenty years old and in
every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,
and in every motion of the green earth there was
a hint of paradise,
and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

—  Mary Oliver, from “Am I Not Among The Early Risers” in West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems (Mariner Books, April 7, 1998)

Notes:

  • Image Credit. Andreas Kuehn.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

 

17 thoughts on “Lightly Child, Lightly.”

  3. Ok, I’m sorry, delicious ease? I’m not even 30 and my body is already fighting me. I actually had the realisation just two or three days ago that I need to stop expecting my body to act like it’s 21 😂

    Anyway Mary Oliver writes beautifully. « In every motion of the green earth there was a hint of paradise »… Now that I can get behind.

  4. I had to go and read the whole poem. Gosh, such simple, yet beautiful writing… As one almost as close to sixty as you 😉 oh wait… nevermind… I have to agree with Laila that the “delicious ease” is taking a bit more work to attain…

  6. How appropriate to read this brilliant poem right now (and of course it‘s Mary – it nearly always is Mary)… I‘m busy preparing our silver wedding day and I took a photo (analog of course, no negative, just a photo of a photo with shadows at all the wrong places etc) of HH and his bride for the invitation and I said: The only thing that stayed the same is my wild white hair. We grew together, were a beautiful pair (if I may say so) then and have grown exponentially in width but I hope also in depth. We no longer are a beautiful couple, we are 25yrs older, less shine more ‚sein‘ (being).
    A beautiful combo.

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