Everything's Coming Up Peonies

Early this morning I walked out to the garden to pick a fresh bouquet of peonies. New blooms keep appearing and will for a while, offering many days of unruly beauty. I love their passionate display of life, lived in this perfect moment - enjoying the rain, the sun, everything just as it is.

When I came in, I thought of Mary Oliver and her poem, "Peonies." It describes my own morning, bare feet and all.

"Peonies"

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
   to break my heart
     as the sun rises,
        as the sun strokes them with his old buttery fingers

and they open --
   pools of lace,
     white and pink --
        and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
   into their curls,
     craving the sweet sap,
        taking it away

to their dark, underground cities --
   and all day
     under the shifty wind,
        as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
   and tip their fragrance to the air,
     and rise,
        their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
   gladly and lightly,
     and there it is again --
         beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
   Do you love this world?
      Do you cherish your humble and sticky life?
          Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
    and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
          fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
   their eagerness
      to be wild and perfect for the moment, before they're
          nothing, forever?


~ Mary Oliver

       

The photographs are mine.