Tag: empty box

Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me—and I thought:

so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful.

Mary Oliver, October (excerpt)

“Elegy for a Game,” Mary Ruefle

allyourprettywords:

Once I was on earth
and I liked it.
I got to look at my toes
underwater. They looked bigger
than they were in real life.
As anyone can tell by looking at it
sugar is meaningless.
You are not supposed to stay in the hot tub
longer than ten minutes.
After that it is meaningless.
Like white poinsettias.
I mean at Christmas.
Maybe Christmas is meaningless too
but we used to pretend it was not
and I liked that.
It’s pointless.
I don’t actually know what a football looks like.
I think they have something to do with babies.
The man is carrying a baby across a field.
He is trying to save it.
It’s hard.
Sometimes people die trying to do things.
That’s OK.
There are things more important
than life or death.
I miss holding my breath.