Tuesday, June 21, 2011

THE PACIFIC

I have a lot more to say about my vacation, but I found this today and I want you to know that having now swam in the Pacific, having been on the edge of land and compared the straight line of the sea to the Arizona badlands, and that the false sense of having somehow been a hero, or that my presence deserves someting other than just another day, that a poem like this has a whole new side to it for me.



The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you as you stand there,
empty-handed—
or have you too
turned from this world—
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

~ Mary Oliver



4 comments:

Kim said...

Wow. Very nice. Love the sun and the Pacific and the poem

Martijn said...

Thanks, man!

Martijn said...

Oh, and who is the sunset picture by, I'd like to know? You?

bulletholes said...

Martijn,.....
Rockwell Kent: Calm and Free, 1909