A really good poem turned up in my inbox today - by Mary Oliver

I just discovered Mary Oliver less than two years ago. Turns out she's a Northeast Ohio native, Chagrin Falls if I remember correctly. She writes about Nature, and the spirituality inherent in reverence for Nature, but not about God. I suspect she's a Natural Pantheist.

Can You Imagine?

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer's night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now - whenever
we're not looking. Surely you can't imagine
they don't dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade - surely you can't imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can't imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.

~ Mary Oliver ~