Novembering

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

When Mary Oliver wrote “The Wild Geese,” she had more on her mind than gardening. And yet isn’t the very essence of gardening when “the world offers itself to your imagination”? Having allowed your imagination to run wild with it, the garden now gets a well-deserved rest. It’s exhausting to be the subject of so much thought, work, care, and attention. “Meanwhile, the world goes on,” Oliver reminds us.

Enjoy “these dark days of autumn rain. . .” (that’s Robert Frost) and pick up a good book–gardening and poetry are both good for the imagination.