One Thing Leads to Another

Eat bread and understand comfort.
Drink water, and understand delight.
Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets
     are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds
who are drinking the sweetness, who are
     thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.
Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.
Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star
both intimate and ultimate,
and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:
oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two
beautiful bodies of your lungs.

~ Mary Oliver