The Advent season is upon us. We are anticipating the birth of Christ, much like Mary did so many years ago. As I continue to reflect on my mothering and how to be more intentional with my children, I never want to forget the big-ness of it all, the awe of seeing my children for the first time, the beauty of these little lives I helped create. So today I turn to Mary Oliver, nature poet extraordinaire, who paints us a picture of another type of mother – one we might all long to be like.

A Meeting
by Mary Oliver

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.

Today’s Poetry Friday roundup is at Carol’s Corner.