It\u2019s a good poem for the last day of final exams on the McNichols Campus: \u201c. . . . I do not want anymore to be useful . . . to lead children . . . into the text of civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better than the grass.\u201d She reminds me of a prayer I learned 40 + years ago on the Pine Ridge Lakota Reservation. If I stand still, still enough and long enough, I can hear the sound a cottonwood makes, and a different sound of grass growing beneath my feet. The stillness and the listening help me to be<\/span> where I stand and walk upon the earth.<\/p>\n It helps to read a poem out loud, several times.<\/p>\n Have a good day.<\/p>\n john st sj<\/p>\n Today\u2019s post: \u201cEarly Morning, My Birthday”<\/span><\/p>\n The snails on the pink sleds of their bodies are moving The rain is slow The wasp sits on the porch in her paper castle. This morning the water lilies are no less lovely, I think, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1<\/span> (1992)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI stood willingly and gladly in the characters of everything – other people, trees, clouds. And this is what I learned, that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion – that standing within this otherness – the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books – can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.\u201d<\/p>\n Monday April 28 \u201cThe world\u2019s otherness is antidote to confusion\u201d A Jesuit friend, Bill Pauly, who died young in 2006 (heart attack), gave me Mary Oliver\u2019s New and Selected Poems, Vol 1 in 2004 when I drove to Santa Clara … Continue reading
\namong the morning glories.
\nThe spider is asleep among the red thumbs
\nof the raspberries.
\nWhat shall I do, what shall I do?<\/p>\n
\nThe little birds are alive in it.
\nEven the beetles.
\nThe green leaves lap it up.
\nWhat shall I do, what shall I do?<\/p>\n
\nThe blue heron floats out of the clouds.
\nThe fish leaps, all rainbow and mouth, from the dark water.<\/p>\n
\nthan the lilies of Monet.
\nAnd I do not want anymore to be useful, to be docile, to lead
\nchildren out of the fields into the text
\nof civility, to teach them that they are (they are not) better
\nthan the grass.<\/p>\n![\"Mary-Oliver\"](\"https:\/\/sites.udmercy.edu\/poetry\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/170\/2014\/04\/Mary-Oliver1.jpg\")
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