a settlement

Last week I attended a rural gathering of artful sorts with the intention of sharing poems about spring. Some were discovered, some were remembered, some were newly born.

This is what I was given, and this is what I brought:



Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.

* * *

Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you
for everything.

—Mary Oliver, "A Settlement," from WHAT DO WE KNOW, Poems and Prose Poems