I went closer, and I did not die. Surely God had His hand in this,
as well as friends. Still, I was bent, and my laughter, as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found. Then said my friend Daniel (brave even among the lions), “ It’s not the weight you carry
but how you carry it--- books, bricks, grief— it’s all in the way you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not, put it down.” So I went practicing. Have you noticed?
Have you heard the laughter that comes, now and again, out of my startled mouth?
How I linger to admire, admire, admire the things of this world that are kind, and maybe
also troubled— roses in the wind, the sea geese on the steep waves, a love to which there is no reply?
- Mary Oliver
