Excerpt from “Gravel”

(Found here)

It is the nature of stone

to be satisfied.

It is the nature of water

to want to be somewhere else.

Everywhere we look:

the sweet guttural swill of the water

tumbling.

Everywhere we look:

the stone, basking in the sun,

or offering itself

to the golden lichen.

It is our nature not only to see

that the world is beautiful

but to stand in the dark, under the stars,

or at noon, in the rainfall of light,

frenzied,

wringing our hands,

half-mad, saying over and over:

what does it mean, that the world is beautiful—

what does it mean?

The child asks this,

and the determined, laboring adult asks this—

both the carpenter and the scholar ask this,

and the fisherman and the teacher;

both the rich and the poor ask this

(maybe the poor more than the rich)

and the old and the very old, not yet having figured it out,

  ask this

    desperately

standing beside the golden-coated field rock,

or the tumbling water,

or under the stars—

what does it mean?

what does it mean?

~Mary Oliver