than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.
...maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world
in the clasp of attention, isn't the perfect prayer,
but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,
is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,
but of pure submission. Tell me, what else could beauty be for?
Photograph by Brother Brian. Excerpt from the poem Terns by Mary Oliver.