Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awaken among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

After the Rain

Sequestered, Week 229 (CCXXIX)

Sequestered, Week 177 (CLXXVII)

Thursday Poem - Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her—

the great-great-aunt dark as hickory

called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud

or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,

and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,

and whisper in a language only the two of us knew

the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel

cheerful as birds

out of the dusty town and into the trees

where she would change us both into something quicker—

two foxes with black feet,

two snakes green as ribbons,

two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door

with the rest of my family,

who were kind, but solid as wood

and rarely wandered. While she,

old twist of feathers and birch bark,

would walk in circles wide as rain and then

float back

scattering the rags of twilight

on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight

burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,

this old woman made out of leaves.

Mary Oliver (from Twelve Moons)

Wordless Wednesday, After the Rain

Thursday Poem - Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her—

the great-great-aunt dark as hickory

called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud

or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,

and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,

and whisper in a language only the two of us knew

the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel

cheerful as birds

out of the dusty town and into the trees

where she would change us both into something quicker—

two foxes with black feet,

two snakes green as ribbons,

two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door

with the rest of my family,

who were kind, but solid as wood

and rarely wandered. While she,

old twist of feathers and birch bark,

would walk in circles wide as rain and then

float back

scattering the rags of twilight

on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight

burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,

this old woman made out of leaves.

Mary Oliver

Sequestered, Week 115 (CXV)

Thursday Poem - Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her—
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker—
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she'd hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

Mary Oliver
(from Twelve Moons, 1978)