Mindful

Last weekend when I was picking my husband up at the hospital and trying to find a parking space, I missed the aisle I wanted to turn on and backed up (unfortunately without looking carefully in my rearview mirror) and promptly backed into the car behind me. Fortunately he was very kind (a doctor) especially after hearing I was picking up my husband.  After exchanging information about our insurance, etc. and driving out of the parking lot into the sunshine, I noticed the sunshine, blue sky and how the sun was reflecting off the snow around the hospital entrance…I felt more peaceful and grateful it was just the car and that everyone was safe and OK.

A poem by Mary Oliver, “Mindful”

Every day
I see or I hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the hay stack
of light.
It is what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

MARY OLIVER from “Why I Wake Early”, Beacon Press, 2002