What is the grass?

What, in the earth world,

is there not to be amazed by

and to be steadied by

and to cherish?

Oh, my dear heart,

my own dear heart,

full of hesitations,

questions, choice of directions,

look at the world.

Behold the morning glory,

the meanest flower, the ragweed, the thistle.

Look at the grass.

-          Mary Oliver

There simply isn’t enough time in life. Add a few hours, and still they’d be filled before sufficient purchase was gained. Choices must be made at the expense of others. And occasionally there is no choice, or no foreseeable alternative. This poem reminds me of part of the Walt Whitman poem:

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full

                hands;

How could I answer the child?. . .I do not know what it

                is any more than he.

This week has been full of prayers, passions, and incessant motion. I’m the boulder Sisyphus rolls interminably up that hill, and I’m scraping, bouncing, bounding, tearing down, expecting I’ll reach a rest shortly before I’m clawing up again. And what is the grass I’m trampling beneath my stony toes? I just don’t know, sometimes. But it’s soft and reminds me of my dreams. What a wonderful world.