i am blood and bone however that happened

experience! experience!—with the rain, and the trees, and all their kindred—has brought me a comfort and a modesty and a devotion to inclusiveness that I would not give up for all the gold in all the mountains of the world. this I knew, as I grew from simple delight toward thought and into conviction: such beauty as the earth offers must hold great meaning. so I begin to consider the world as emblematic as well as real, and saw that it was—that shining word—virtuous. that it offers us, as surely as the wheat and the lilies grow, the dream of virtue.

I think of this every day. I think of it when I meet the turtle with its patient green face, or hear the hawk's tin-tongued skittering cry, or watch the otters at play in the pond. I am blood and bone however that happened, but I am convictions of my singular experience and my own thought, and they are made greatly of the hours of the earth, rough or smooth, but never less than intimate, poetic, dreamy, adamant, ferocious, loving, life-shaping.

: mary oliver, ‘comfort’; long life: essays and other writings