Times are changing – we are in the growing pangs of that change. Some things are dying and some are being reborn. I love the way this poem expresses the magic of this in-between time, when everything is slipping away yet brand new at the same time. 

Last night
in the fields
I lay down in the darkness
to think about death,
but instead I fell asleep,
as if in a vast and sloping room
filled with those white flowers
that open all summer,
sticky and untidy,
in the warm fields.

When I woke
the morning light was just slipping
in front of the stars,
and I was covered
with blossoms.

I don’t know
how it happened—
I don’t know
if my body went diving down
under the sugary vines
in some sleep-sharpened affinity
with the depths, or whether
that green energy
rose like a wave
and curled over me, claiming me
in its husky arms.

I pushed them away, but I didn’t rise.
Never in my life had I felt so plush,
or so slippery,
or so resplendently empty.

Never in my life
had I felt so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers
began.

White Flowers
~ Mary Oliver

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