Gathering ideas.

Have you ever seen

anything

in your life

more wonderful

than the way the sun

every evening

relaxed and easy

floats towards the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills

or the rumpled sea

and is gone--

and how it slides again

out of the blackness

every morning

on the other side of the world

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils

say, on a morning in early summer

at its perfect imperial distance--

and have you ever felt fro anything

such wild love--

do you think there is anything, in any language

a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you

as the sun

reaches out,

as it warms you



as you stand there,

empty handed--

or have you too

turned from this world--

or have you too

gone crazy

for power,

for things?

MARY OLIVER