yeah. you know.

And you know
what a smile means,
don't you?

---

I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery; I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was

alive,
for a little while.

---

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don't we?

Slowly.

---

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
[Mary Oliver, from 'Dogfish,' in New and Selected Poems, Vol. One]