A letter from home 🏠

A Letter from Home – Mary Oliver

She sends me news of blue jays, frost,

Of stars, and now the harvest moon

That rides above the stricken hills.

Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain,

And lists what is already lost.

Here where my life seems hard and slow,

I read of glowing melons piled

Beside the door, and baskets filled

With fennel, rosemary and dill,

While all she could not gather in

Or hide in leaves, grow

Black and falls.

Here where my life seems hard and strange,

I read her wild excitement when

Stars climb, frost comes, and blue jays sing.

The broken year will make no change

Upon her wise and whirling heart; –

She knows how people always plan

To live their lives, and never do.

She will not tell me if she cries.

I touch the crosses by her name;

I fold the pages as I rise,

And tip the envelope, from which

Drift scraps of borage, woodbine, rue.