Birthdays!

Today is my birthday!  It began with an early meditation at 5:15 (the exact time of my birth).  After Payton and I took our walk, I found this Mary Oliver poem that expresses this moment exquisitely.  "What I want in my life is to be dazzled... I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery... that the imperfections are nothing and the light is everything... And I do!"

The Ponds

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them --

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided --
and that one wears an orange blight --
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away --
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled --
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing --
that the light is everything -- that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading.  And I do.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(House of Light)

Much gratitude to panhala.net for this photo & poem found @ http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Ponds.html