Dream Vessels #125: Source Marsha Connell
In this New Year, may you be safe; may you be happy; may you be free from suffering; may you be at ease. And may your creative well be full!
May all who need it find solace, sanctuary, and loving kindness.
Peace, peace, peace,
Marsha
In the Storm
Mary Oliver
Some black ducks
were shrugged up
on the shore.
It was snowing
hard, from the east,
and the sea
was in disorder.
Then some sanderlings,
five inches long
with beaks like wire,
flew in,
snowflakes on their backs,
and settled
in a row
behind the ducks—
whose backs were also
covered with snow—
so close
they were all but touching,
they were all but under
the roof of the ducks’ tails,
so the wind, pretty much,
blew over them.
They stayed that way, motionless,
for maybe an hour,
then the sanderlings,
each a handful of feathers,
shifted, and were blown away
out over the water,
which was still raging.
But, somehow,
they came back
and again the ducks,
like a feathered hedge,
let them
stoop there, and live.
If someone you didn’t know
told you this,
as I am telling you this,
would you believe it?
Belief isn’t always easy.
But this much I have learned,
if not enough else—
to live with my eyes open.
I know what everyone wants
is a miracle.
This wasn’t a miracle.
Unless, of course, kindness—
as now and again
some rare person has suggested—
is a miracle.
As surely it is.
Copyright © 2006 Mary Oliver All rights reserved
from the Southern Review (http://trk.cp20.com/click?9fht2-14q1bj-rbt65x1)
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
Thank you to Rabbi George for sharing Spirit Rock’s “Metta”, Loving-Kindness meditation practice, and this poem.
