A story to break your heart, open

Each weekend, my Facebook friend Gevene Hertz sends out two readings to open and close a time of sharing joys and sorrows for Unitarian Universalists living in Europe on a list serve. I have been following this list serve for several years now. I enjoy receiving the readings and hearing/sharing joys and sorrows with folks across the pond. Here is a beautiful piece from Gevene, posted on Sunday, February 18 in Europe, although it is still Saturday, February 17 where I live in Vermont.

*Lead*

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

~ Mary Oliver ~

*(New and Slected Poems Volume Two)*