Sublime

“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift."

- Mary Oliver

The morning before he died in the final year of his seventies, he drafted a poem containing these lines:

You can’t tell when strange things with meaning

will happen. I’m [still] here writing it down

just the way it was. “You don’t have to

prove anything,” my mother said. “Just be ready

for what God sends.” I listened and put my hand

out in the sun again.

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It was taken some time ago

At first it seems to be

a smeared

print: blurred lines and grey flecks

blended with the paper;

then, as you scan

it, you can see something in the left-hand corner

a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree

(balsam or spruce) emerging

and, to the right, halfway up

what ought to be a gentle

slope, a small frame house.

In the backgro... See more