Flare

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

It is not the sunrise,

which is a red rinse,

which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,

or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,

will go on sizzling and clapping

from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,

that are billowing and shining,

that are shaking in the wind...

The poem is not the world.

It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.

It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,

like the door of a little temple,

so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,

and less yourself than part of everything.

--Mary Oliver