The Book

Lilies – as tall as ourselves and more lovely,

And full of fragrance, and long orange tongues,

And those plaything the bees-stood in

A neighbor’s yard, a thick, ramping

Hedge of them. You could not help but see

That to be beautiful is also to be simple

And brief; is to rise up and be glorious, and then vanish;

Is to be silent but as though a song was in you only it

Hasn’t yet been heard

At least in a garden of real earth and sparrows and wrens,

And people hurrying by, pausing then hurrying on

To the usual daily foolishness that comes to so little

So far as the real things matter: eternity,

The unseen, the unrecognized, the filing of the heart

With goodness, as if it were a hive

In which nothing corrupt could live. And I thought

If any one of them could write

The story of their lives, who wouldn’t

Stand in line and hand over the last of their

Shining money-oh, the very end of their shining money-

To buy it.

In Mary’s poems I often wait for the phrase that clinches at the heart, both wringing it and opening it at the same time. Not all poems cause this reaction, but most do. Can you guess what phrase brought me the “kick” or the “surprise” that she can still do after nearly 8 months of writing about one of her poems a day? For me, today, I hung my doubts up when she wrote “real things matter…the filing of the heart with goodness, as if it were a hive.” When I read this I resonate and my deepest soul, which is also yours, says, “ah yes, there I see you my friend.” This is the story I long to her in others, and the story I ache to tell, and to live – to spend my days filling my heart with goodness, awareness, love, and yes, all the doubts too must fly in as well. They stretch my heart so that there is even more room for all.

How do you fill your heart with goodness?