Evidence

and as for hope, that tender advisement, even that I’m going to leave behind. I’m just going to put on my jacket, my boots, I’m just going to go out to sleep all this night in some unnamed, flowered corner of the pasture.

What, in the earth world, is there not to be amazed by and to be steadied by and to cherish? Oh, my dear heart, my own dear heart, full of hesitations, questions, choice of directions, look at the world. Behold the morning glory, the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle. Look at the grass.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those     who think they have the answers. Let me keep company always with those who say     “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

But it’s okay if, after all, I’m not a lily, but only grass in a clutch of curly grass waving in the wind, staring sunward: one of those sweet, abrasive blades.

I pray for the desperate earth. I pray for the desperate world. I do the little each person can do, it isn’t much.

Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.

And I have become the child of the clouds, and of hope. I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is. I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned, I have become younger. And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know? Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.

and suggest that you sit now very quietly in some lovely wild place, and listen to the silence. And I say that this, too, is a poem.

Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.