Monday, July 18, 2011


Today is Day #50, the half way point of local radio stations' "100 Days of Summer" and I offer two Mary Oliver poems that express the experiences of this middle point of the season.

I can't keep my hummingbird feeders filled these days...they are emptied at record speed.

Also, this week, the roadsides of our rural-suburban roads have become saturated with wild Queen Anne's Lace and the blue of chicory (read and scroll down). Enjoy!

Passing the Unworked Field

Queen Anne's lace
is hardly
prized but
all the same it isn't
idle look
how it
stands straight on its
thin stems how it
scrubs its white faces
with the
rags of the sun how it
makes all the
it can.

Of Time

Don't even ask how rapidly the hummingbird
lives his life.
You can't imagine. A thousand flowers a day,
a little sleep, then the same again, then
he vanishes.
I adore him.

Yet I adore also the drowse of mountains.

And in the human world, what is time?
In my mind there is Rumi, dancing.
There is Li Po drinking from the winter stream.
There is Hafiz strolling through Shariz, his feet
loving the dust.