Happy New Year

I thought long and hard about what to say, starting a new year, everything sort of washed clean, new resolutions to make, to keep, to break, new dreams to dream...and thought that as I grow older, I realise that learning to appreciate the ordinary, to see the world in a grain of sand...that is all there is...that is what matters.

All ordinary moments dissolving into each other, dissolving into light.

And I thought nothing exemplified this so much as Mary Oliver's Mindful. Happy New Year. And I hope you enjoy it.

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for—
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world—
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant—
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these—
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?