Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of an owl?
Who has it, and who doesn't?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black cear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceburg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?

-Mary Oliver

I read this today, on a crowded train. She writes and reads like a psalm, with honesty and full of the awareness that we are all, at the end of the day, just humans stuck in human minds and human worlds. and hallelujah, for all of it.

i read this and it made me think of you. you could have written this. i thought of us having church on the side of a mountain, wondering if God really gives a damn about homosexuality on any given day. and then us having church again, another mountain in another state. you are giggling and i am stone-faced. and you say to me later, "the leaves were all dancing for you, and you just wanted to be mad".
this, my love, is pain.