I've been inspired to change my tag.

Dana - speaking of, I adore yours. Where did it come from?

I was chatting with a friend about the trip to NY I'm taking. I'm doing a Broadway run, seeing Sondheim's Assassins, Avenue Q (which involves puppets), and The Boy From Oz (which involves Hugh Jackman singing and dancing in nicely tight pants).

On our way back from Avenue Q, my sister and I passed by the theatres where The Boy From Oz and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof are playing (right next door to each other). There is a review of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof that praises the show's "pure, naked" direction posted on the outside wall of the theatre. We both noticed the words "pure, naked" next to the giant picture of Hugh Jackman and simultaneously gasped, before realizing that those words didn't mean what we'd assumed they did. t /pointless anecdote

Now that's doing Broadway right.

I love Oliver's poems, too. Here's my favorite:

Poppies
Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation
of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.

There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't
sooner or later drown
in the indigos of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage
shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.

Of course nothing stops the cold,
black, curved blade
from hooking forward—
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But I also say this: that light
is an invitation
to happiness,
and that happiness,
when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.

Inside the bright fields,
touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight—

and what are you going to do—
what can you do
about it—
deep, blue night?

Oh! We read Mary Oliver in my writing class all the time, and, in fact, my teacher used "The Journey" as sort of a theme threaded throughout the semester a year or two ago.

KristinT -- I meant to make that my tagline recently, and forgot. I found it on my writing teacher's business card for her massage therapy business.

Teppy - do you want to share? I can share. I can even give, to someone with a cu...I mean snazzy hairdo like yours. :)

Oh, thanks, sweetie! For now, I'm good with my current tag, since I had a luchadore move pulled on me last night.

More Oliver. This one makes me think of Susan, picking her "feralberries" for jam.

August

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

oh.

Those are lovely.

Someone, I can't recall who, posted Wild Geese quite a while ago and I used part of it as a tag. I want more. I'll have to request some Mary Oliver from the library.