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Well I seem to have fallen rather behind in my aim to record a poem I found each week,
the weeks are just running away with me - I thought I would do it once every fortnight,
but I think it's going to be more like once a month, because it's too hard to do video
once a week! particularly when I'm trying to get a nice backdrop and it's not always
sun shining as it is this morning... anyway, I wanted to record a little piece about a
poem that I found at the weekend, or re-found, it's called The Messenger, by Mary Oliver,
and it seemed like a beautiful lead in to sharing something else, which is a new site
that I've created, called The Art of Everyday Wonder, which you'll find at artofeverydaywonder.com
and it's all about using writing and poetry - the reading and the writing of poetry - because
the reading is important too! - and photography to, er, to express and practice everyday wonder,
and really a lot of Mary Oliver's work is about that practice, I think, so this poem
is called The Messenger, and I refound it when I was looking for some poems to share
with a poetry class I'm running online, called Everyday Poetry, and looking it out for them
and sharing it made me read it more carefully, and I just love this section in the middle
in particular, and that's the bit I'm going to share with you just now, 'are my boots
old?' she asks, 'are my boots old, is my coat torn, am I no longer young and still not half-perfect,
let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still,
and learning to be astonished', and I really like the reference to work in the middle - it's
maybe not a description that everybody would use but I like the way that she thinks about
work, and the way that she describes what she does, as work, and something that matters:
'standing still, and learning to be astonished', so that's the middle section of the poem called
'The Messenger' by Mary Oliver, and she has been a little messenger for me for the opening
rather than launch, I'm calling it an opening of something that is new, and precious to
me, which is mostly learning about standing still and learning to be astonished, thank
you.