A Meeting by Mary Oliver

A friend of mine mentioned that he was wanting to read this poem again, so of course as I am faithful to Mary Oliver, I looked it up. It is about the beauty we can find in the wild, unscheduled movement of life. A movement that can really only be found if we stop and watch nature in this world. Or children. I am trying to incorporate more wild presence in my day-to-day...an unsolicited hug for my husband or a surprise tickle attack for my daughter. These small things can be the most grounding.

A Meeting
by Mary Oliver

She steps into the dark swamp where the long wait ends. The secret slippery package drops to the weeds. She leans her long neck and tongues it between breaths slack with exhaustion and after a while it rises and becomes a creature like her, but much smaller. So now there are two. And they walk together like a dream under the trees. In early June, at the edge of a field thick with pink and yellow flowers I meet them. I can only stare. She is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her child leaps among the flowers, the blue of the sky falls over me like silk, the flowers burn, and I want to live my life all over again, to begin again, to be utterly wild.