Happy Birthday

Grateful Dead: Eyes of the World/Weather Report Suite 11/25/73

I thought the earth
remembered me,
she took me back
so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts,
her pockets full
of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before,
a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me
and the white fire
of the stars
but my thoughts,
and they floated
light as moths
among the branches
of the perfect trees.
All night I heard
the small kingdoms
breathing around me,
the insects,

and the birds
who do their work
in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell,
as if in water,
grappling with
a luminous doom.
By morning
I had vanished
at least a dozen times
into something better.
--Mary Oliver

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, COMRADES