Those days

Summer memories.
By Mary Oliver
Summer 2006 5.15.06

When I think of you I think of the long summer days
     you lay in the sun, how you loved the sun, how we
           spread our blanket, and friends came, and

the dogs played, and then I would get restless and
     get up and go off to the woods
           and the fields, and the afternoon would

soften gradually and finally I would come
     home, through the long shadows, and into the house
           where you would be

my glorious welcoming, tan and hungry and ready to tell
     the hurtless gossips of the day and how I
           listened leisurely while I

put flowers—daisies and mallow and long purple and
     butter-and-eggs and everlasting—in water, in jars
           all around the room until like our lives they shimmered everywhere.

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Reprinted from Thirst, © 2006 by Mary Oliver, by permission of Beacon Press, www.beacon.org.