26.12.11

My sister Susan and I created this together
She painted the background and I, the Kingfisher.
here is a poem to accompany it.

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your 
whole life that doesn't have its 
splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, 
the water remains water--hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could
believe. I don't say he's right. Neither
do I say he's wrong. Religiously he 
swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, 
and with a rough andeasy cry
I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.
 
Mary Oliver 

1 comment: