Sunday, January 20, 2013

About Angels and About Trees

this is the angel tree at Bard which I discovered when I dropped my son off  for his freshman semester


Where do angels

fly in the firmament,
and how many can dance 

on the head of a pin?

Well, I don’t care 

about that pin dance,
what I know is that 

they rest, sometimes,
in the tops of the trees

and you can see them, 

or almost see them,
or, anyway, think: what a 

wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and 

others have possibly lost a
beloved one, 

and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are 

miraculous, full of
angels (ideas); even

empty they are a
good place to look, to put 

the heart at rest—all those
leaves breathing the air, so

peaceful and diligent, and certainly 

ready to be
the resting place of 

strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved.

Copyright @2009 by Mary Oliver.
From Evidence: Poems, Beacon Press.

2 comments:

Isabel Marant said...

This is such a nice post!

Heather Robinson said...

So very beautiful--very happy to have found you thanks to the wonderful tg. Actually wrote a post a week ago called "into the trees" and Mary Oliver's poem hit the nail on the head (or the pin) of what I was trying to express.
With Best Wishes from Provence,
Heather