Lucky Ducks

If I were any happier I would faint. Sue, leaving town for ten days, left me with a CD of some of her favorite songs, decorated with her own intense watercolor of two "Lucky Ducks" in just the colors of this landscape shot from Mt. Tabor Park. And she pasted in this poem.


Messenger

by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird--equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind
on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.