Simplicity

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone—
and how it slides again

out of the blackness
every morning,
on the other side of the world,

like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance—
and have you ever felt for anything

such wild love—
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough

for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you …

from “The Sun,” by Mary Oliver