The Sun

The Sun

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?

~Mary Oliver~

 Last night was the last evening that we would be "dancing" to Mary Oliver's  The Sun. It was the third time I had the privilege of moving to this amazing poem. The visual way that Mary Oliver combines her words particularly speaks to me. I can grab onto and see each of her carefully chosen and placed words, and then begin to sculpt them with my hands, my body and my mind. It is so easy to get lost in her words and in doing so find yourself. Each time I show up to dance since my foot injury, the dance reinvents itself. Not by any means the way I would dance if this was a choice, but for now it has to be the only dance I can dance. 

The phrase that blindly chose me last night was "the sun, every evening". As always we each went around in the circle speaking our phrase, and then on the second go round spoke of how those particular words spoke to us at that moment in time. For me, it made me see how much I cherish that special sacred window of time each evening, when my beloved comes home and we share wine and conversation and dinner. It is usually the first time I am seeing him that day, so for me it is a beginning, like a new day, a sunrise. My dance felt rich and full, as I embraced and danced those words. I returned home feeling filled up only to be met with many emotions that I had to process as we continue on this journey of healing together.