I Like

I like finishing things.  Sometimes it takes a really long time!  I think I started this altered book about twenty years ago!  What!  I was showing it to my niece yesterday and noticed that there are just a few pages that aren't finished.  The book is mainly full of simple collages with a nature theme.  I pondered what I could do to finish those last pages. 

Another like I have is poetry.  Well, that is the perfect way to finish this book.  A few nature-related poems.  

Starlings in Winter

by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

The other poem I am using is by Mark Nepo

In Muir Woods

Masters of stillness,
masters of light,
who, when cut by something
falling, go nowhere and heal,
teach me this nowhere,

who, when falling themselves,
simply wait to root
in another direction,
teach me this falling.

Four hundred year old trees,
who draw aliveness from the earth
like smoke from the heart of God,
we come, not knowing
you will hush our little want
to be big;

we come, not knowing
that all the work is so much
busyness of mind; all
the worry, so much
busyness of heart.

As the sun warms anything near,
being warms everything still
and the great still things
that outlast us

make us crack
like leaves of laurel
releasing a fragrance
that has always been.

I think they make a great way to finish this book.

I am joining

Lee Anna and the other grateful women that participate in I Like Thursdays. Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends!