

Yesterday, Larry Robinson, the extraordinary Sonoma County poet sent out on his wonderful daily-poetry list, Poetry Lovers a poem by Mary Oliver “Shadows”:
Shadows Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the world and into a human heart. And meanwhile the gold-trimmed thunder wanders the sky; the river may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town. Cyclone, fire and their merry cousins brings us to grief - but these are the hours with the old wooden-god faces; we lift them to our shoulders like so many black coffins, we continue walking into the future. I don’t mean there are no bodies in the river, or bones broken by the wind. I mean everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar of the tornado swears there was no mention ever of any person, or reason - I mean the waters rise without any plot upon history, or even geography. Whatever power of the earth rampages , we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never the opposite of truth. - Mary Oliver
He had made an error, changing the last word, to truth, when Mary had written:
Shadows Everyone knows the great energies running amok cast terrible shadows, that each of the so-called senseless acts has its thread looping back through the world and into a human heart. And meanwhile the gold-trimmed thunder wanders the sky; the river may be filling the cellars of the sleeping town. Cyclone, fire and their merry cousins brings us to grief - but these are the hours with the old wooden-god faces; we lift them to our shoulders like so many black coffins, we continue walking into the future. I don’t mean there are no bodies in the river, or bones broken by the wind. I mean everyone who has heard the lethal train-roar of the tornado swears there was no mention ever of any person, or reason - I mean the waters rise without any plot upon history, or even geography. Whatever power of the earth rampages , we turn to it dazed but anonymous eyes; whatever the name of the catastrophe, it is never the opposite of love. - Mary Oliver

Now that we have removed the deep, deep self whose gate is often boredom, by our culture of distraction, it’s good to remember the gold-trimmed thunder can suddenly and abruptly make what’s important known in the deep, deep revealing at that moment, with truth and love.
Well, y’all, trying again tomorrow,
Con/Jur/d, 7/21/2021
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