The RO Report, "Nashville Skyline" Edition

I was listening to some Joni Mitchell while I was trading today. Her lyrics are like, so spiritual or something, you know? Anyway, they moved me. Deeply.

Then, (amidst placing some large stock orders) I decided to step outside and do some gardening. Perhaps it was the Joni Mitchell that was influencing me, but I glanced down at a dead brown leaf resting on some moss and I quickly wrote down the following line...

"As gentle as a leaf, resting on a bed of moss."

Just then a crow flew by. It's wings pushed down on the air and made a sound like this, "wish, wish, wish, wish, wish." It was really beautiful. I thought about things I'm wishing for... like peace... and love. And truth be told, I shed a tear as I breathed deep into the beauty of life.

Anyway, so I've decided today to eschew the RO report and instead offer you all some poetry. Money is so crass when measured against the beauty of our surroundings, no? Be happy in the knowledge that if you lost a little money today that another of your stock market brethren made some. Please enjoy, and peace.

The title of this poem is, "The Spirit Likes To Dress Up" and it's by Mary Oliver.


The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.