Such Patience!

Waiting for Sunset ~ North Carolina

This was the view last night;
and this is the poem I read on the airplane today:
The Fist

There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist,
though of course

if you see anything
in the heavens
in this way
you had better get

your eyes checked
or, better still,
your diminished spirit.
The heavens

have no fist,
or wouldn't they have been
shaking it
for a thousand years now,

and even
longer than that,
at the dull, brutish
ways of mankind -

heaven's own
creation?
Instead: such patience!
Such willingness

to let us continue!
To hear,
little by little,
the voices -

only, so far, in
pockets of the world -
suggesting the possibilities
of peace?

Keep looking.
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.

Mary Oliver ~ from her book Thirst
Contemporary American Poet (b. 1935)
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, 1984

San Francisco ~ Last Month

[See also "The Messenger"]