12 Oct
2016
Posted in: Poems
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Much More Listening to Do

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Evidence (continued)
by Mary Oliver

3.

I ask you again: if you have not been
enchanted by
this adventure–your life–what would
do for
you?

And, where are you, with your ears
bagged down
as if with packets of sand? Listen. We
all
have much more listening to do. Tear
the sand
away. And listen. The river is singing.

What blackboard could ever be in-
vented that
could hold all the zeros of eternity?

Let me put it this way–if you disdain
the
cobbler may I assume you walk bare-
foot?

Last week I met the so-called deranged
man
who lives in the woods. He was walking
with

great care, so as not to step on any
small,
living thing.

For myself, I have walking in these
woods for
more than forty years, and I am the
only
thing, it seems, that is about to be used
up.
Or, to be less extravagant, will, in the
foreseeable future, be used up.

First, though, I want to step out into
some
fresh morning and look around and
hear myself
crying out: “The house of money is fall-
ing!
The house of money is falling! The
weeds are
rising! The weeds are rising!”

***

(final stanza)

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