Since the start of advent, I’ve been walking every evening with my neighbor Rita. I usually walked anyways with the dogs, but she started to join me as part of her Lenten promises to get out everyday. It has been a real joy to walk and visit with her and to have that time out in the fresh evening air.

A few nights ago it was absolutely lovely so we took a different, longer path. We walked by this field up the State Route from my house, and it was full of butterweed and fleabane.

I love this time of year, before all the farmers get out to douse their fields in roundup, before the inevitable corn or soybean rows are laid. The wildflowers grow lush and beautiful and for a time we get to savor them.

Excerpt from “Moccasin Flowers” by Mary Oliver

But all my life–sofar–
I have loved best
how the flowers rise
and open, how

the pink lungs of their bodies
enter the fore of the world
and stand there shining
and willing–the one

thing they can do before
they shuffle forward
into the floor of darkness, they
become the trees.