Erica and Mary Oliver

got my first mail here at the clinic.
one word.
THRILLING.

what is it about getting real mail?
email is great, don’t get me wrong.

but there is something about getting a real live letter.
that’s just it.
it’s alive.
i can touch it.
feel it.
smell it.
know that the sender also touched this envelope, this paper.
the pen scratched out
these letters
to make words
to make sentences.
to send to me.

it’s visceral.
it’s comforting to know that it touched my friend,
all the way from the other side of the earth.

the mailman came on a motorcycle.
he called out, “Tao po!” at the gate.
“Pasok po,” i answered.
“Villanueva?”
“Opo.” My eyes popping out of my head. One letter! One padded envelope!
“Tatlong beces na pumunta ako dito o.”
“Pasensiya na po. May dalawa? Naku. Maraming salamat po.”

a man passing by (maybe he is my neighbor?) saw the wide smile on my face.
he said something to the mailman about how happy i looked. i think he helped him find the clinic.

masaya talaga.

courtesy of erica, am listening to canon, ani difranco’s latest.
read her letter three, okay, maybe four times.
she included two poems.

When I Am Among the Trees
Mary Oliver

Especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me, the trees stir in their leaves and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.


Messenger
Mary Oliver

The work is loving the world.
Here the sunfowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy,
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.



i wrote her back right away.
i enclosed a leaf from a kamias tree in san vicente, in the backyard of a family of furniture makers.
will find the post office tomorrow.
i might beat this letter back to the states.
maybe she’ll get it the same day that we meet for one of our breakfast dates.
i hope so.