Interlude Recaps and a poem for your day.

On the last few weeks: Yesterday I was meant to post my final essay from “My Mind is a Forest: An Autistic Wandering Through the Language of Silence and the Poems of Mary Oliver.” But I am tired, tiptoeing on the edges of burnout in a very demanding week, processing huge disappointment and exciting news and deep fatigue all at once. I just couldn’t pull myself together to post with the care and attention I intended. I decided to wait until next Thursday for the last installment. A red, barn-like shed is partly hidden by a large tree with golden leaves. 35mm film, by torri blue. This gives you a week in the meantime to read parts one through three, if you haven’t yet! You can find those here: PART ONE: A letter to Mary Oliver TORRI BLUE · JAN 4 Read full story PART TWO: Every morning, so far, I’m alive. | On Synaptic Overgrowth and Mary Oliver's "Landscape" TORRI BLUE · JAN 11 Read full story PART THREE: If a poem was a person... | On the Language of Silence and Mary Oliver's "Whispers" TORRI BLUE · JAN 18 Read full story Part four will be out next Thursday. Please, if you would—share these with your friends, comment, subscribe—this platform is my favorite place to be these days and I would love to connect more with y’all :) Finally, for good measure, here is one of my most Mary-inspired poems for you. It came from a walk around Radnor Lake State Park, a conversation with a friend about out-and-back hiking, and a deer swimming across a pond on a day I badly needed something to be awestruck by. Hope you enjoy :) Praise, Praise, Praise That Sap-Sticky Life Look at your life, green thicket around you. look at it, strewn across the floor, listen, crunching underfoot, noisy with birdsong, feel it, sap-covered and sticky as a life should be. Going out and back will show you this: there is no way to walk the same path twice, not if you are watchful, if your eyes, your ears, your heart are wide with love or something like it. So fill your senses with pleasure, with surprise, with thanks. Tire them out. Go ahead! There is only so much can be adored today, so drink what you can of that cool water. Let your belly be full. Praise the daylily now, for tomorrow it dies. Praise the heron today as she flies overhead. Praise the deer as she dips in the pond. You may never see that again, and oh, is it marvelous. Praise, praise, praise that sap-sticky life of yours, changing and messy and too-short, too short to see it all, too short to not bless it with every wow you have to give. The Daylily © 2024 t.r.h. blue 1971 E. Beltline NE, STE 106 #611, Grand Rapids, MI 49525