Attention is the beginning of devotion By Mary Oliver

 

“Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

By Mary Oliver.

Artist Lucy Grossmith.

Find me where the rosebay willowherb grows

and the air is balmy with meadowsweet and musk mallow.

Let’s wander awhile through fairytale forests

of lady’s slipper, gypsy weed and sweet violet.

Kiss me in clouds of cornflower and cuckoo flower,

whisper secrets among the foxgloves and the flax.

We’ll lie in golden meadows all bejewelled with

marsh marigold, viper’s bugloss and ragged robin.

Before falling into dreams of enchanter’s nightshade,

waking to the merry peals of fairy bells at dawn —

Meadow clary, red helleborine, yellow birds-nest:

I hold these names like incantations on the tip of my tongue,

spells to resuscitate the disappearing past.

Wood calamint, English sundew, ghost orchid:

songs of grief and longing and dreams of returning;

what beauty deadens in us when they’re lost.