Poem for Friday and Hillwood Orchids

Black Oaks
By Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I’m pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another — why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,

I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

--------

A winner of the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, Oliver died yesterday at home in Florida at the age of 83.

The DC area was under another Doom Watch all day Thursday with the initial snowfall totals growing and the predicted hour of its start getting earlier all afternoon. So I kept an eye on the sky while taking Adam and Maddy to lunch at Noodles and Company (he wanted spicy food, she wanted the opposite) and to grab essentials at MOM's. The snow was just starting when I went to the church around the corner to do a Kyogre raid, and now we have new snow over the old.

We watched The Orville, which was predictable but fun (Yul Brynner! Billy Joel!), then, since it's now streaming, we watched A Star Is Born, which I felt the same about as the first time: adore the music, love the performances, appreciate the first hour, feel increasingly manipulated by the flaws in the screenplay in the second hour so that by the climax I'm more irritated than moved. Since it is snowing again, here is some color from Hillwood's greenhouse: