August 21: Things You Don't Want to Do, Mary Oliver, "The Poet Thinks about the Donkey"

Every day, I do things I don't want to do.  I get up early.  Go to work.  Spend eight hours with really lovely people doing a job I really don't enjoy all that much.  Then I get to leave and do things I really enjoy.  Teach.  Be with my kids.  Write.  Kiss my wife.

Very few people have dream jobs.  Maybe Oprah Winfrey.  John Irving.  The Kardashians.  The majority of the human race are just like me.  Putting one foot in front of the other, waiting for moments of grace.

Mary Oliver captures moments of grace.  That's what I love about her.  She takes the absolute ordinary and finds something miraculous.

Saint Marty thinks this poem is miraculous:

The Poet Thinks about the Donkey

by:  Mary Oliver

On the outskirts of Jerusalem
the donkey waited.
Not especially brave, or filled with understanding,
he stood and waited.

How horses, turned out into the meadow,
     leap with delight!
How doves, released from their cages,
     clatter away, splashed with sunlight!

But the donkey, tied to a tree as usual, waited.
Then he let himself be led away.
Then he let the stranger mount.

Never had he seen such crowds!
And I wonder if he at all imagined what was to happen.
Still, he was what he had always been:  small, dark, obedient.

I hope, finally, he felt brave.
I hope, finally, he loved the man who rode so lightly upon him,
as he lifted one dusty hoof and stepped, as he had to, forward.