an emperor for a minute

-

-

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.
-
When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.
-
And for all, I'd know more -- the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light.

-

Mary Oliver
-

the shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea

-

-
O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee:
I plead Thy love of me; --
The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.
(Christina Rossetti)
-

seeing grace

-
"When he came, and saw the grace of God,
he was glad, and exhorted them all
to remain faithful to the Lord, with steadfast purpose."
(Acts 11:23)
-
How often I ask for grace, and yet how rarely I take time to see it. How rarely I look for the trace of God's hand in the world around me.
-
This week I search for grace.
-

--for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his,
To the father through the features of men's faces.
{Gerald Manley Hopkins}
-

a bounce upward

-

Freshen the Flowers, She Said

-

So I put them in the sink, for the cool porcelain

was tender,

and took out the tattered and cut each stem

on a slant,

trimmed the black and raggy leaves, and set them all--

roses, delphiniums, daisies, iris, lilies,

and more whose names I don't know, in bright new water--

gave them

-

a bounce upward at the end to let them take

their own choice of position, the wheels, the spurs,

the little sheds of the buds. It took, to do this,

perhaps fifteen minutes.

-

Fifteen minutes of music

with nothing playing.

-

(Mary Oliver, Why I Wake Early: New Poems)

-