The Inner Valley

You can die for it- an idea, or the world. People have done so, brilliantly, letting their small bodies be bound to the stake, creating an unforgettable fury of light. But this morning, climbing the familiar hills in the familiar fabric of dawn, I thought of China, and India and Europe, and I thought how the sun blazes for everyone just so joyfully as it rises under the lashes of my own eyes, and I thought I am so many! What is my name? What is the name of the deep breath I would take over and over for all of us? Call it whatever you want, it is happiness, it is another one of the ways to enter fire. ******* ✎ Mary Oliver (Maple Heights, U.S., 10 September 1935 - Hobe Sound, U.S., 17 January 2019). ◙ Artwork: Konstantin Yuon

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic, used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine, abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves, gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies, leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil, turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods, the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose, the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot. ******* ✎  Jim Harrison (Grayling, Michigan, U.S., 11 December 1937 ~ Patagonia, Arizona, 26 March 2016 )