Mornings at Blackwater

There is one morning each week I take a walk, a slow steady walk and leave the things I can out in the kitchen unbothered, whisking flour and sugar with the taste of summer.

Beyond our old house whose roof valleys were actual, the songbirds sweetly made me smile. I am renewed. What a morning, how I stood and rejoiced, carried away surely up to heaven.

An hour in the colors of the garden, a thousand new kinds of blue and fresh green that makes it easy to take in the sky. Even the green things tell me I am whole! Little glistening animals hence four tiny wings whirling around and purring, swooping low down.

It is poised upon me, mighty to make me rise, nervous in the shadows, the scent that feeds me again in the clearness of morn’s brightness. Let us tell the years that pass, if we shield them well— so spring then re-opens the good life. With peace within, time stretches before you now— a new morning that is here, so still and so full of heart.

Love that garden! Love your life! Be curious, the sun rises low and true!

• Mary Oliver