4 Poems That Changed My Life - second Installment
Although not old, but just enough older than me to know more about life, Carol Flake mentored me into my fifties as I struggled to breathe new life into a very worn out way of living. She introduced me to Mary Oliver’s, The Journey. The last two lines have guided many of my decisions ever since.
Mary Oliver
THE JOURNEY
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice -- though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. "Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voice behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save.