Mary Oliver is my favorite poet right now. I picked up New and Selected Poems Volume Two after reading a piece about her in the New York Times Travel Section. So many of Oliver’s poems – most of them, in fact – are about her observations of and interaction with the natural world. This one seems appropriate for at least half of the world right now:
Song for Autumn
In the deep fall
don’t you imagine the leaves think how
comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees themselves, especially those with mossy,
warm caves, begin to think
of the birds that will come — six, a dozen — to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
vanishes, and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its
bellows. And at evening especially,
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.
I found this poem online at Poetry Daily. Visit their website to see many more poems and to learn about who they are and what they do.