This fortnight I’ve selected a poem by one of my favourite authors, Mary Oliver, who has the wonderful ability to always makes me feel better about the world. The joy she finds in nature and her quirkiness are both exemplified in this poem. I hope it uplifts you too!

Aunt Leaf Mary Oliver

Needing one, I invented her –

The great-great-aunt, dark as hickory

Called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud

Or The Beauty -of-the-night.

Dear Aunt, I’d call into the leaves

and she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool

and whisper in a language only the two of us knew

the word that meant follow,

and we’d travel 

cheerful as birds

out of the dusty town and into the trees

where she would change us both into something quicker –

two foxes with black feet

two snakes green as ribbons

two shimmering fish—

and all day we’d travel.

At day’s end she’d leave me back at my own door

with the rest of my family

who were kind but solid as wood

and rarely wandered. While she,

old twist of feathers and birch bark,

would walk in circles wide as rain and then

float back

scattering the rags of twilight

on fluttering moth wings;

or she’d slouch from the barn like a grey opossum;

or she’d hang in the milky moonlight

burning like a medallion,

this bone dream,

this friend I had to have

this old woman made out of leaves 

Mary Oliver 

(New and Selected Poems Vol.1 1992