Loons

I am so thankful for having had the chance to see this loon nesting yesterday! And then a reader, Tom, sent along the lovely poem below. Mary Oliver has captured one of those precious moments that I long for while at the cabin, and she has done so much more beautifully than I ever could, so, without further ado: 

The Loon
Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their neat and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.

                                            And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.

                                                  Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.

                              I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

--- Mary Oliver