Let the world have its way with you, luminous as it is with mystery and pain — graced as it is with the ordinary. - Mary Oliver

Ten times a day something happens to me like this - some strengthening throb of amazement - some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.

If the world were only pain and logic,
who would want it?

Of course, it isn’t.
Neither do I mean anything miraculous,
but only
the light that can shine out of a life.

I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished,
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.