18 May

There is time left, look for your soul

by Jon Katz

“Well, there is time left –
fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
   from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is
   the mystery, which is death as well as life,
   and not be afraid!

To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome
    with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
    god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
    present hour.

to the song falling out of the mockingbird’s pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
   in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

 While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the waking from a little sleep.”

  Verses are from the poem
“Have You Ever Tried To Enter The Long Black Branches,”
 by Mary Oliver, from the book “west wind.”

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