New housemate Bea has been browsing my bookshelves, which I encouraged her to do; it’s always a little sad to think of how lonely all those books are, the ones that have been in the same place for months or years without me even touching them, much less taking them down to look inside. One morning she was reading in a collection of Mary Oliver’s work, and when she discovered this poem below she brought it to me to read, too. We liked the part about stones, because we are great collectors of them. And the singing — and the silence.

THIS WORLD

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it
nothing fancy.
But it seems impossible.
Whatever the subject, the morning sun
glimmers it.
The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open
and becomes a star.
The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark
pinprick well of sweetness.
As for the stones on the beach, forget it.
Each one could be set in gold.
So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds
were singing.
And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music
out of their leaves.
And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and
beautiful silence
as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too
hurried to hear it.
As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs
even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.
So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,
and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,
so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being
locked up in gold.

-Mary Oliver