by Mary Oliver
A THOUSAND MORNINGS
All night my heart makes its way however it can over the rough ground of uncertainties, but only until night meets and then is overwhelmed by morning, the light deepening, the wind easing and just waiting, as I too wait (and when have I ever been disappointed?) for redbird to sing.
AN OLD STORY
Sleep comes its little while. Then I wake
in the valley of midnight or three a.m.
to the first fragrances of spring
which is coming, all by itself, no matter what.
My heart says, what you thought you have you do not have.
My body says, will this pounding ever stop?
My heart says: there, there, be a good student.
My body says: let me up and out, I want to fondle
those soft white flowers, open in the night.
HUM, HUM
1.
One summer afternoon I heard
a looming, mysterious hum
high in the air; then came something
like a small planet flying past—
something
not at all interested in me but on its own
way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:
bees, swarming,
not to be held back.
Nothing could hold them back.
2.
Gannets diving.
Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes
meeting.
The grass singing
as it sipped up the summer rain.
The owl in the darkness, that good darkness
under the stars.
The child that was myself, that kept running away
to the also running creek,
to colt’s foot and trilliams,
to the effortless prattle of the birds.
3. SAID THE MOTHER
You are going to grow up
and in order for that to happen
I am going to have to grow old
and then I will die, and the blame
will be yours.
4. OF THE FATHER
He wanted a body
so he took mine.
Some wounds never vanish.
Yet little by little
I learned to love my life.
Though sometimes I had to run hard—
especially from melancholy—
not to be held back.
5.
I think there ought to be
a little music here:
hum, hum.
6.
The resurrection of the morning.
The mystery of the night.
The hummingbird’s wings.
The excitement of thunder.
The rainbow in the waterfall.
Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.
The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his
neighbors.
The bluebird with its unambitious warble
simple yet sufficient.
The shining fish. The beak of the crow.
The new colt who came to me and leaned
against the fence
that I might put my hands upon his warm body
and know no fear.
Also the words of poets
a hundred or hundreds of years dead—
their words that would not be held back.
7.
Oh the house of denial has thick walls
and very small windows
and whoever lives there, little by little,
will turn to stone.
In those years I did everything I could do
and I did it in the dark—
I mean, without understanding.
I ran away.
I ran away again.
Then, again, I ran away.
They were awfully little, those bees,
and maybe frightened,
yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,
to live their life.
Hum, hum, hum.
I HAVE DECIDED
I have decided to find myself a home in the mountains, somewhere high up where one learns to live peacefully in the cold and the silence. It’s said that in such a place certain revelations may be discovered. That what the spirit reaches for may be eventually felt, if not exactly understood. Slowly, no doubt. I’m not talking about a vacation.
Of course at the same time I mean to stay exactly where I am.
Are you following me?
WAS IT NECESSARY TO DO IT?
I tell you that ant is very alive!
Look at how he fusses at being stepped on.
GREEN, GREEN IS MY SISTER’S HOUSE
Don’t you dare climb that tree
or even try, they said, or you will be
sent away to the hospital of the
very foolish, if not the other one.
And I suppose, considering my age,
it was fair advice.
But the tree is a sister to me, she
lives alone in a green cottage
high in the air and I know what
would happen, she’d clap her green hands,
she’d shake her green hair, she’d
welcome me. Truly
I try to be good but sometimes
a person just has to break out and
act like the wild and springy thing
one used to be. It’s impossible not
to remember wild and want it back. So
if someday you can’t find me you might
look into that tree or—of course
it’s possible—under it.
THE INSTANT
Today
one small snake lay, looped and
solitary
in the high grass, it
swirled to look, didn’t
like what it saw
and was gone
in two pulses
forward and with no sound at all, only
two taps, in disarray, from
that other shy one,
my heart.
THE WAY OF THE WORLD
The chickens ate all the crickets.
The foxes ate all the chickens.
This morning a friend hauled his
boat to shore and gave me the most
wondrous fish. In its silver scales
it seemed dressed for a wedding.
The gills were pulsing, just above
where shoulders would be, if it had
had shoulders. The eyes were still
looking around, I don’t know what
they were thinking.
The chickens ate all the crickets.
The foxes ate all the chickens.
I ate the fish.
EXTENDING THE AIRPORT RUNWAY
The good citizens of the commission
cast their votes
for more of everything.
Very early in the morning
I go out
to the pale dunes, to look over
the empty spaces
of the wilderness.
For something is there,
something is there when nothing is there but itself,
that is not there when anything else is.
Alas,
the good citizens of the commission
have never seen it,
whatever it is,
formless, yet palpable.
Very shining, very delicate.
Very rare.
TIDES
<
br /> Every day the sea
blue gray green lavender
pulls away leaving the harbor’s
dark-cobbled undercoat
slick and rutted and worm-riddled, the gulls
walk there among old whalebones, the white
spines of fish blink from the strandy stew
as the hours tick over; and then
far out the faint, sheer
line turns, rustling over the slack,
the outer bars, over the green-furred flats, over
the clam beds, slippery logs,
barnacle-studded stones, dragging
the shining sheets forward, deepening,
pushing, wreathing together
wave and seaweed, their piled curvatures
spilling over themselves, lapping
blue gray green lavender, never
resting, not ever but fashioning shore,
continent, everything.
And here you may find me
on almost any morning
walking along the shore so
light-footed so casual.
OUT OF THE STUMP ROT, SOMETHING
Out of the stump rot
something
glides forward
that is not a rope,
unless a rope has eyes,
lips,
tongue like a smack of smoke,
body without shoulders.
Thus: the black snake
floating
over the leaves
of the old year
and down to the pond,
to the green just beginning
to fuzzle out of the earth,
also, like smoke.
If you like a prettiness,
don’t come here.
Look at pictures instead,
or wait for the daffodils.
This is spring,
by the rattled pond, in the shambled woods,
as spring has always been
and always will be
no matter what we do
in the suburbs.
The matted fur,
the red blood,
the bats unshuttering
their terrible faces,
and black snake
gliding across the field
you think you own.
Long neck, long tail.
Tongue on fire.
Heart of stone.
IN OUR WOODS, SOMETIMES A RARE MUSIC
Every spring
I hear the thrush singing
in the glowing woods
he is only passing through.
His voice is deep,
then he lifts it until it seems
to fall from the sky.
I am thrilled.
I am grateful.
Then, by the end of morning,
he’s gone, nothing but silence
out of the tree
where he rested for a night.
And this I find acceptable.
Not enough is a poor life.
But too much is, well, too much.
Imagine Verdi or Mahler
every day, all day.
It would exhaust anyone.
THE MORNING PAPER
Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition
is the best
for by evening you know that you at least
have lived through another day)
and let the disasters, the unbelievable
yet approved decisions,
soak in.
I don’t need to name the countries,
ours among them.
What keeps us from falling down, our faces
to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?
THE POET COMPARES HUMAN NATURE
TO THE OCEAN FROM WHICH WE CAME
The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,
it can lie down like silk breathing
or toss havoc shoreward; it can give
gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth
like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can
sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,
and so, no doubt, can you, and you.
ON TRAVELING TO BEAUTIFUL PLACES
Every day I’m still looking for God
and I’m still finding him everywhere,
in the dust, in the flowerbeds.
Certainly in the oceans,
in the islands that lay in the distance
continents of ice, countries of sand
each with its own set of creatures
and God, by whatever name.
How perfect to be aboard a ship with
maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.
But it’s late, for all of us,
and in truth the only ship there is
is the ship we are all on
burning the world as we go.
THE MAN WHO HAS MANY ANSWERS
The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.
While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.
LIFE STORY
When I lived under the black oaks
I felt I was made of leaves.
When I lived by Little Sister Pond,
I dreamed I was the feather of the blue heron
left on the shore;
I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,
my face like a star,
my happiness brimming.
Later I was the footsteps that follow the sea.
I knew the tides, I knew the ingredients of the wrack.
I knew the eider, the red-throated loon
with his uplifted beak and his smart eye.
I felt I was the tip of the wave,
the pearl of water on the eider’s glossy back.
No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape
this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution
to gravity and a single shape.
Now I am here, later I will be there.
I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,
the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that
looks like a lamb.
“FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY”
For I will consider my dog Percy.
For he was made small but brave of heart.
For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.
For when he slept he snored only a little.
For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.
For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when
he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.
For he ate only the finest food and drank only the
purest of water, yet would nibble of dead fish also.
For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of
short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day.
For he took his medicines without argument.
For he played easily with the neighborhood’s Bull
Mastiff.
For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.
For he was an instrument for the children to learn
benevolence upon.
For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.
For when he sniffed it was as if he were being
/> pleased by every part of the world.
For when he sickened he rallied as many times as
he could.
For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.
For we humans can seek self-destruction in ways
he never dreamed of.
For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet
refused always to offer himself to be admonished.
For his sadness though without words was
understandable.
For there was nothing sweeter than his peace
when at rest.
For there was nothing brisker than his life when
in motion.
For he was of the tribe of Wolf.
For when I went away he would watch for me at
the window.
For he loved me.
For he suffered before I found him, and never
forgot it.
For he loved Anne.
For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue
about whether or not God made him.
For he could fling himself upside down and laugh
a true laugh.
For he loved his friend Ricky.
For he would dig holes in the sand and then let
Ricky lie in them.
For often I see his shape in the clouds and this is
a continual blessing.
VARANASI
Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,
where fires were still smoldering,
and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.
A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;
she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it
over her body, slowly and many times,
as if until there came some moment
of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.
Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her
and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,
no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,
for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker
of the world, and this is his river.
