Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.
[Annie Dillard]

I have been saving a small stack of library books for several months (you can do this with academic libraries) because I was wanting to type up passages from them. One of the books is Mary Oliver’s Red Bird, and here is one poem from it.

OCEAN

I am in love with the Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is

always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each one of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.