The Sun

This week, I am in the wilds of Northern Ontario on a summer canoe trip. I will be spending my time swimming and eating and resting and playing and reading and writing and swimming again. But most of all I will be worshiping the great ball of beauty in the sky.

I offer you this beautiful poem by Mary Oliver entitled “The Sun”.

I encourage you to take some time today to bow down to the sun.

The Sun
by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen anything in your life
more wonderful than the way the sun,
every evening, relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea, and is gone–

and how it slides again out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,

say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance–
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love–

do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure that fills you,
as the sun reaches out,
as it warms you as you stand there,
empty-handed–

or have you too turned from this world–
or have you too gone crazy for power,
for things?