The Verdant Mile (Tracy Grammer)

"Green" has many meanings/connotations: of course there's the whole Oz/Emerald City imagery. Then there's lush, rich, fertile, novice, inexperienced, not fully developed or perfected in growth or condition, unseasoned, simple, fresh, recent, young, environmentally sound or beneficial.

This blogging thing is new to me... and I intend to start slowly... baby steps, as they say... or, to continue the metaphor, tendrils. Each day, for a while, I'm going to post a song, a book, a poem and a quote. I may eventually begin to bare my soul. Then again, the songs/books/poems/quotes I choose may just provide an indication of where my wisdom/serenity/courage lies at any given moment, eh?

SONG: The Verdant Mile by Tracy Grammer

BOOK: Walking a Literary Labyrinth by Nancy Malone

POEM: Messenger by Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.

QUOTE: "If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking." ~ Buddhist proverb