Inspiration — How do YOU find it?

What rings your chimes, wakes up your inner happy bells, sends you right into bliss — guaranteed?

It’s good to know that.

Pay attention — often — (like, well…. always) to what you love.  Appreciate your days.  Love your nights. Find ways to enjoy the mundane. Rise up, lift up and “float a little above this difficult world” to quote my favorite poet, Mary Oliver.

You will surely sing better, be smarter, be more aware, love more….heck, you’ll probably do everything with a little more ease and grace.

For me, one way straight to bliss is a Mary Oliver poem.  Below is a delicious sample of Mary Oliver.

“The Ponds” is from Volume One of  “New and Selected Poems” by Mary Oliver.  Go to http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=mary+oliver&x=0&y=0. All of her books will come up. At the top of that page is the author page with more information about Mary Oliver.

The Ponds
by Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight —
and this one is a glossy cheek

half-nibbled away —
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.