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November 2009 
If you wrote a Valentine to the world, what would it say?
Posted on Feb 14th, 2009
by 
Laura
Laura
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for February 14, 2009:
Wild, Wild
This is what love is:
the dry rose bush the gardener, in his pruning, missed
suddenly bursts into bloom.
A madness of delight, an obsession.
A holy gift, certainly.
But often, alas, improbable.
Why couldn't Romeo have settled for someone else?
Why couldn't Tristan and Isolde have refused
the shining cup
which would have left peaceful the whole kingdom?
Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests of our lives.
Over and over Faust, standing in the garden, doesn't know
anything that's going to happen, he only sees
the face of Marguerite, which is irresistible.
And wild, wild sings the bird.
--Mary Oliver
Access: Public
perfect choice.
isn’t it, though? another I wish I had written. thanks.
Mary Oliver is always a good choice
thanks, lovely laura. nice to read MO and see your photography this sunday mornin’.
am going to a poetry slam this after noon and will report back!
happy day to you!
ah, Mary, lucky you! I would love to hear about it when you get back. I went to a slam last fall and heard the brilliant poet Natasha Trethewey read. enjoy!
Tom, I’m glad you liked the poem too. I have never read an awkward or insufficent piece by MO>
well, the good news is that while i am at the poetry event, there is a party gong on right here at gaia, so come on over to my blog where the party is~oops, just got ginger chocolate on my computer thingee.
Nice, very nice. Just getting around to it this evening. Good choice, although, tough to make a bad one considering Oliver’s opus, eh?!
no, love is not sensible. it is neither right- nor left-brained. it is not a mental construct.
beautiful poem, thank you. And the photo, a great match.
thanks, y’all. yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything Mary Oliver has written that I didn’t like. Tara, I took the picture on Jekyll Island last winter. the grackles love to pose there.
I love that photo and I love that those birds are called grackles. what a great name.
a madness of delight. mmmmmmmmmmmm!!!
they were holy gifts, those birds. and they were like that every morning, singing with their faces turned up to the sky.
I want to go to this island place someday.
What gorgeous gorgeousness is this!!
He is a letter to the world
You open it
It says
-live.
I know something of that ‘dry rose bush the gardener, in his pruning, missed/suddenly bursts into bloom’ - I had roses last November. November! I yearn to be that rose bush, that improbable delight!
And The Grackles of Jekyll… sounds like Poe!!
Tsuya – let’s go together sometime and see the grackles of jekyll and laura and maybe poe and ms oliver will be there in spirit and then I want to go to plum island and see some horseshoe crabs, ancient creatures, with dlil. someday…… ;-)
laura – I’m listening to abigail washburn again. I can’t stop. I MUST go to bed!
oh, how I love the open expansiveness of ‘someday…’
Tsuya, it does sound like Poe. Y’all would like Jekyll, I imagine. it isn’t very developed at all and is especially beautiful in winter. there is one beach with driftwood everywhere that I call Ghost Beach. Cumberland and Sapelo Islands are probably my favorites though. there are wild horses on Cumberland. : )
Ghost Beach, where driftwood dreams in its bed of sand of a life far away on another shore, soaring toward heaven…
I love giving that you give names to places in nature… I do that, too. One of my favorite parks is riddled with names… Spider Walk and Rose Meadow, Holly Lane, The Arches…
Yeah, I have always done that. Grotto Hollow is my new name for this spot down in the ravine below my house. : )