There was someone I loved who grew old and ill When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks? Of course for each of us, there is the daily life. Which was better by far than a lecture, which was comfortable, exciting, unforgettable. It wasn’t a persuasion, it was all the river’s own constant joy I don’t know how you get to suspect such an idea. Yes, it could be that I am a tiny piece of God, and each of you too, or at least The leaf of grass, the genius, the politician, the poet.Īnd if this is true, isn’t it something very important? He’s the many desperate hands, cleaning and preparing their weapons. He’s van Gogh and Allen Ginsberg and Robert Motherwell. He’s the ghetto and the Museum of Fine Arts. If God exists he isn’t just churches and mathematics. Imagine how the lily (who may also be a part of God) would sing to you if it could sing,Īnd how are you so certain anyway that it doesn’t sing? Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going. He’s also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke. If God exists he isn’t just butter and good luck. You don’t hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.Īnd it’s difficult to hear anything anyway, through all the traffic, the ambition. You don’t hear such voices in an hour or a day. I’d been to the river before, a few times.ĭon’t blame the river that nothing happened quickly. And I too, whispered the moss beneath the water. Whenever the water struck a stone it had something to say,Īnd the water itself, and even the mosses trailing under the water.Īnd slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me what they were saying.Īnd I too, said the stone.

I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a water splashed stoneĪnd all afternoon I listened to the voices of the river talking.

Evidence poems mary oliver