October--Mary Oliver

Not all of it, but most of it, lineated incorrectly....


October

1.
There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.

What does the world
mean to you if you can’t
trust it
to go on shining when you’re

not there? And there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.

5.
Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?

6.
Look, I want to love this world
as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

7.
Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me—and I thought:

so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful.