6. Every summer the lilies rise and open their white hands until they almost cover the black waters of the pond. And I give thanks but it does not seem like adequate thanks, it doesn’t seem festive enough or constant enough, nor does the name of the Lord or the words of thanksgiving come into it often enough. Everywhere I go I am treated like royalty,

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES When I am among the trees, especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines, they give off such hints of gladness. I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself, in which I have goodness, and discernment, and never hurry through the world but

WE SHOULD BE WELL PREPARED The way the plovers cry goodbye. The way the dead fox keeps on looking down the hill with open eye. The way the leaves fall, and then there’s the long wait. The way someone says: we must never meet again. The way mold spots the cake, the way sourness overtakes the cream. The way the river water rushes by, never to return.

what a river can be—a friend, a companion, a hint of heaven.

INVITATION Oh do you have time to linger for just a little while out of your busy and very important day for the goldfinches that have gathered in a field of thistles for a musical battle, to see who can sing the highest note, or the lowest, or the most expressive of mirth, or the most tender? Their strong, blunt beaks drink the air as they strive

4. Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

In an hour the sky was filled with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning. Followed by the deep bells of thunder. Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source! Both of them mad to create something! The lightning brighter than any flower. The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.

I was thinking of the sweet, electric drowse of creation,

THE ORCHARD I have dreamed of accomplishment. I have fed ambition. I have traded nights of sleep for a length of work. Lo, and I have discovered how soft bloom turns to green fruit which turns to sweet fruit. Lo, and I have discovered all winds blow cold at last, and the leaves, so pretty, so many, vanish in the great, black packet of time, in the