Thursday morning -> what to do? Fun, have fun: read. Read a bit. Reading is fun and good. From the latest issue of The New Yorker, which arrived in yesterday's mail, read a dozen or so of its first pages, saving fiction "The Beach House" for later. "Tables for Two." A couple of short features. A little longer one about a coffee-tasting competition (Brazil won) sponsored by Illy. A few more pages of "Before the coffee gets cold" - - "a novel" so charming and magical that I have to make it last and last, cannot read devouringly through and be done. Fun.

But don't I have more important things to do than read? As a matter of fact, No, I do not, because, though there were years when I forgot, from way, way early in life I found out that nothing is more important than reading, reading is the most important thing I've done and do in my Time of life. Uncle Wiggly. Dr. Doolittle. Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys. We Were Tired of Living in a House. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Narnia, LOTR & Harry Potter. Some poetry. Frost. Yeats. "Psalms of David" (David didn't write all of them, many are written by courtiers to flatter David). Margaret Mitchell. In my late twenties, escape from Navy life into astronomy textbooks with a telescope. Some song lyrics, hymn lyrics. Crosby. Wesley. William Alexander Percy. Below, from a friend, by Mary Oliver, this is Part 3, so I searched out, copy and pasted all four parts, it's a story with a life-threatening reason.

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you're in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it's happened.

Or not.

I am speaking from the fortunate platform of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then, and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while, he had a lifetime.

~Mary Oliver

Among other most important things I've done in life, June 29, 1957,

holding my newborns and finding out what "bonding" means, retiring from USN, memeories that are none of your business, first day of theological seminary on my 45th birthday and all that followed. Watching as an iced tray of raw oysters is set down in front of me. Picking up and eating a filet of fried mullet (munch the crispy tail first). A Sunday in the Spring of 1984 interviewing the vestry of Trinity, Apalachicola. Turning down calls from other parishes because I was so happy in place. Meeting and working with Bill Lloyd on the old Cove School building. A dinner plate with a perfect carrot, green beans, a garlic bud, mushrooms, and a thick slice of roast leg of lamb. Happiness. I am still happy in place: Life Itself is Fun and Good.

Here's the rest of that poem. Mary Oliver was born September 10, 1935, four days before I was born, and as of yesterday, I've outlived her by exactly five years. I've outlived my father by six years, and his mother by nineteen years, going on twenty years. Pete, Linda's father, by twenty-three years. Even at 88 & counting, Life is Good, Fun & Good.

RSF&PTL

T88&c

WILD & PRECIOUS LIFE

a collection of beautiful words…..

The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac by Mary Oliver

by Vanessa

1.
Why should I have been surprised?
Hunters walk the forest
without a sound.
The hunter, strapped to his rifle,
the fox on his feet of silk,
the serpent on his empire of muscles—
all move in a stillness,
hungry, careful, intent.
Just as the cancer
entered the forest of my body,
without a sound.

2.
The question is,
what will it be like
after the last day?
Will I float
into the sky
or will I fray
within the earth or a river—
remembering nothing?
How desperate I would be
if I couldn’t remember
the sun rising, if I couldn’t
remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t
even remember, beloved,
your beloved name.

3.
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

so why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

4.
Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?