Sand Dabs, Five
What men build, in the name of security, is built of straw.
*
Does the grain of sand know it is a grain of sand?
*
My dog Ben — a mouth like a tabernacle.
*
You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence,
serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but
I’ll take it.
*
The pine cone has secrets it will never tell.
*
Myself, myself, myself, that darling hut!
How quick it will burn!
*
Death listens
to the hum and strike of my words.
His laughter spills.
*
Spring: there rises up from the earth such a blazing sweetness
it fills you, thank God, with disorder.
*
I am a performing artist; I perform admiration.
Come with me, I want my poems to say. And do the same.
by Mary Oliver
from Winter Hours
Houghton Mifflin, 1999