Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond

"So heavy
is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,
always it is a surprise
when her smoke-colored wings

open
and she turns
from the thick water,
from the black sticks

of the summer pond,
and slowly
rises into the air
and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,
I take the deep breath
of happiness, and I think
how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,
how improbable
that ascension is not possible,
though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself--
the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,
the turtle,
the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful
that the summers are long
and the ponds so dark and so many,
and therefore it isn't a miracle

but the common thing,
this decision,
this trailing of the long legs in the water,
this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden
gray-blue sheets of her wings
strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing
takes her in.

Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond 

by Mary Oliver

2021 Reflections by Michele Savikko Bilyeu:




Oh the absolute joy for those of us who both believe in and protecting the gardens of our lives through love and compassion of our natural world holding faith in those who help our world not seek to harm her and all who abide within her in all ways.


Oh the deep love for family, both immediate and extended. Oh the dark sorrow for those lost or those left in pain and suffering and grief.


I think of and pray for all of you. I hold you in my thoughts and share compassion and empathy with you all.


All things grow and all that lives or causes change will pass. And so shall all of us when our time and our cycle of change is with us.


Take care of one another and feel the warm and radiant love of all there is, and ever will be.


Take care.
Love,
Michele
April 2021

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Michele Bilyeu Creates With Heart and Hands as she shares her imaginative, magical, and healing journey from Alaska to Oregon. Creating, designing, sewing, quilting, and wildcrafting... from my heart and with my hands