If someday you can't find me...

Our marathon of tree planting has been temporarily interrupted by three inches of overnight snow. I'm using the snow day to catch up on bill paying, bread making, and sitting by the fire reading some poetry.

For my birthday, Ed gave me A Thousand Mornings, a small collection of poems by Mary Oliver. I like her poetry. It is easy to read, not too serious. I read somewhere that her creativity is stirred by nature, and Oliver, an avid walker, often pursues inspiration on foot. I'm not a poet, but every day, on every walk, I am inspired by my observances of the natural world here at Farm Dover.

Some of her poems are so light that they remind me of the Shel Siverstein ones we read to the children when they were young. Here's one that cheered me today. It's called Green, Green is my Sister's House.

Don't you dare climb that tree

or even try, they said, or you will be

sent away to the hospital of the

very foolish, if not the other one.

And I suppose, considering my age, 

it was fair advice.

But the tree is a sister to me, she

lives alone in a green cottage

high in the air and I know what

would happen, she'd clap her green hands,

she'd shake her green hair, she'd 

welcome me. Truly

I try to be good but sometimes 

a person just has to break out and

act like the wild and springy thing

one used to be. It's impossible not

to remember wild and want it back. So

if someday you can't find me you might 

look into that tree or – of course

it's possible – under it.

- MARY OLIVER