black oaks.

"Okay,

not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance &comfort.
Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays carp &whistle all day in the branches, without the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I`m pale with longing for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen &you can`t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage of their shoulders, &their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another -- why don`t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

&to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don`t want to sell my life for money, I don`t even want to come in out of the rain."

-M.O.

on being joyful and content.

"Every time we do it it`s a new world. I live again. Love is implicit in every connection. It should be. Thus when absent it makes us insane. It breaks our equilibrium and we have to flounder for reasons. When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it`s cruel and wrong and we all know this. We live in a constant state of denial and imbalance."