Hello and welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson and today is Thursday, November 30th, 20, 2003.

Today's poem is by Mary Oliver and it's called The Mangroves.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments and then read it again.

The Mangroves As I said before, I am living now in a warm place surrounded by mangroves.

Mostly I walk beside them.

They discourage entrance.

The black oaks and the pines of my northern home are in my heart, even as I hear them whisper,

listen, we are trees too.

Okay, I'm trying. They certainly put on an endless performance of leaves.

Admiring is easy, but affinity, that does take some time.

So many and so laggy and all of them rising as if attempting to escape this world, which, don't they know it, can't be done.

Are you trying to fly or what? I ask, and they answer back.

We are what we are. You are what you are. Love us if you can.

As someone who grew up in northern climes with northern flora and fauna that now lives in Florida. I can sympathize with the speaker of this poem,

especially at this time of year when back in what I still instinctively think of as my home,

the weather would be crisp and cold, some years, even snowy by now. And instead, it's not that way.

The line at the heart of this poem, I think, is admiring is easy, but affinity that does take some time.

You can acknowledge the objective qualities and virtues of a thing, of a place, of a culture.

You can even think of yourself as a person who is visiting

long term, but to allow your heart and soul to be settled, to be kin to a place or the living things in that place, that takes something else.

As the last line puts it, that takes love.

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