A Thousand Mornings

I took myself to the movies tonight.  It was a day among days when life keeps happening, in a good way but busy.  I wanted a quiet couple of hours to be someplace away without the hassle of packing and traveling.  The movie provided an elegant escape.  I recommend Belle, a perfectly paced story of true events in England more than two hundred years ago.  The lead actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw is a pleasure to watch.

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There are two books from California still to write about.  For today I picked the one that slows my heartbeat and gives me a moment to pause with each reading.  I've never met a book of poems by Mary Oliver that I didn't like, and this book is no exception.  A Thousand Mornings (2012) was a delightful find; every time I pick it up I see something new, sometimes in a poem I've already read. 

I thought this evening about why Oliver's poems strike such a chord with me.  She doesn't gloss over the hard stuff.  She writes about all of it, the real parts of life that bring us joy and sadness and all the feelings in between.

Because the beating of my heart is ever present these days, I selected this poem to share~

A Thousand Mornings
 by Mary Oliver

All night my heart makes its way
however it can over the rough ground
of uncertainties, but only until night
meets and then is overwhelmed by
morning, the light deepening, the
wind easing and just waiting, as I
too wait (and when have I ever been
disappointed?) for redbird to sing.