More poems

It probably surprises most of my friends that I go to church these days. For a long long time I've been against organized religion because of what I saw of it in the media. In October we started going to the Unitarian Universalist Church of West Hartford, and my ideas about church changed for the better. If you're ever interested in some uplifting and inspiring sermons you should read a few of Rev. Jan's.

Today the service included this poem by Mary Oliver...

The Terns

The birds shrug off
the slant air,
they plunge into the sea
and vanish
under the glassy edges
of the water,
and then come back,
as white as snow,
shaking themselves,
shaking the little silver fish,
crying out
in their own language,
voices like rough bells –
it’s wonderful
and it happens whenever
the tide starts its gushing
journey back, every morning
or afternoon.
This is a poem
about death,
about the heart blanching
in its folds of shadows because it knows
someday it will be
the fish and the wave
and no longer itself –
it will be those white wings,
flying in and out
of the darkness
but not knowing it –
this is a poem about loving
the world and everything in it:
the self, the perpetual muscle,
the passage in and out, the bristling
swing of the sea.