Poetry of Beauty

“There is incredible symmetry in a tree, between its inner life and its outer life, between its rooted memory and its external active presence. A tree grows up and down at once and produces enough branches too incarnate its wild divinity. It doesn’t limit itself- it reaches for the sky and it reaches for the source, all in one kind of seamless movement. So I think landscape is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you.”― John O’Donohue, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain
by Mary Oliver

“Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking
the rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
that we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.”

Do not bypass beauty today.
Nor awe and wonder.
The power of pause, praise and joy.
Knee deep in a river, dying of thirst.
Drink in what’s all around.
Especially what’s within.
Reaching for the sky and the source.

“We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.”― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth