This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart as the sun rises, as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open -- pools of lace, white and pink -- and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes into the curls, craving the sweet sap, taking it away
to their dark, underground cities -- and all day under the shifty wind, as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies, and tip their fragrance to the air, and rise, their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness gladly and lightly, and there it is again -- beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open. Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?
Goldenrod by Mary Oliver
On roadsides, in fall fields, in rumpy bunches, saffron and orange and pale gold,
in little towers, soft as mash, sneeze-bringers and seed-bearers, full of bees sand yellow beads and perfect flowerlets
and orange butterflies. I don’t suppose much notice comes of it, except for honey, and how it heartens the heart with its
blank blaze. I don’t suppose anything loves it, except, perhaps, the rocky voids filled by its dumb dazzle.
For myself, I was just passing by, when the wind flared and the blossoms rustled, and the glittering pandemonium
leaned on me. I was just minding my own business when I found myself on their straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored, and was happy, and why not?
Are not the difficult labors of our lives full of dark hours? And what has consciousness come to anyway, so far,
that is better than these light-filled bodies? All day on their airy backbones they toss in the wind,
they bend as though it was natural and godly to bend, they rise in a stiff sweetness, in the pure peace of giving one’s gold away.