by Mary Oliver
Shelley
When I'm dying,
and near paradise,
maybe
the little boat will come
like a cloud—
like a wing—
like a white light burning.
This morning,
in the actual fog
beside the rocking sea,
there was nothing—
not a sail,
not a soul.
There was only this—
an idea.
Beauty
can die all right—
but don't you worry,
from utter darkness—
since opposites are, finally, the same—
comes light's snowy field.
And, as for eternity, what's that
but the collation of all the hours we have known
of sweetness
and urgency?
The boat bounced and sparkled,
then it trembled,
then it shook,
then it lay down on the waves.
I believe in death.
I believe it is the last wonderful work.
So they spilled from the boat,
they plunged toward darkness, they drowned.
You know the story.
How the sky flares and grows brighter, all the time!
How time extends!
Maples
The trees have become
suddenly very happy
it is the rain
it is the quick white summer rain
the trees are in motion under it
they are swinging back and forth they are tossing
the heavy blossoms of their heads
they are twisting their shoulders
even their feet chained to the ground feel good
thin and gleaming
nobody can prove it but any fool can feel it
they are full of electricity now and the shine isn't just pennies
it pours out from the deepest den
oh pretty trees
patient deep-planted
may you have many such days
flinging your bodies in silver circles shaking your heads
over the swamps and the pastures
rimming the fields and the long roads hurrying by.
The Osprey
This morning
an osprey
with its narrow
black-and-white face
and its cupidinous eyes
leaned down
from a leafy tree
to look into the lake—it looked
a long time, then its powerful
shoulders punched out a little
and it fell,
it rippled down
into the water—
then it rose, carrying,
in the clips of its feet,
a slim and limber
silver fish, a scrim
of red rubies
on its flashing sides.
All of this
was wonderful
to look at,
so I simply stood there,
in the blue morning,
looking.
Then I walked away.
Beauty is my work,
but not my only work—
later,
when the fish was gone forever
and the bird was miles away,
I came back
and stood on the shore, thinking—
and if you think
thinking is a mild exercise,
beware!
I mean, I was swimming for my life—
and I was thundering this way and that way
in my shirt of feathers—
and I could not resolve anything long enough
to become one thing
except this: the imaginer.
It was inescapable
as over and over it flung me,
without pause or mercy it flung me
to both sides of the beautiful water—
to both sides
of the knife.
That Sweet Flute John Clare
That sweet flute John Clare;
that broken branch Eddy Whitman;
Christopher Smart, in the press of blazing electricity;
my uncle the suicide;
Woolf on her way to the river;
Wolf, of the sorrowful songs;
Swift, impenetrable murk of Dublin;
Schumann, climbing the bridge, leaping into the Rhine;
Ruskin, Cowper;
Poe, rambling in the gloom-bins of Baltimore and Richmond—
light of the world, hold me.
Sand Dabs, Three
Six black ibis
step through the black and mossy panels
of summer water.
Six times
I sigh with delight.
***
Keep looking.
***
The way a muskrat
in the snick of its teeth can carry
long branches of leaves.
***
Small hawks
cleaning their beaks
in the sun.
***
If you think daylight is just daylight
then it is just daylight.
***
Believe me these are not just words talking.
This is my life, thinking of the darkness to follow.
***
Keep looking.
***
The fox: his barking, in god's darkness, as of a little dog.
The flounce of his teeth.
***
Every morning
all those pink and green doors
into the sea.
Forty Years
for forty years
the sheets of white paper have
passed under my hands and I have tried
to improve their peaceful
emptiness putting down
little curls little shafts
of letters words
little flames leaping
not one page
was less to me than fascinating
discursive full of cadence
its pale nerves hiding
in the curves of the Qs
behind the soldierly Hs
in the webbed feet of the Ws
forty years
and again this morning as always
I am stopped as the world comes back
wet and beautiful I am thinking
that language
is not even a river
is not a tree is not a green field
is not even a black ant traveling
briskly modestly
from day to day from one
golden page to another.
Black Snake This Time
lay
under the oak trees
in the early morning,
in a half knot,
in a curl,
and, like anyone
catching the runner at rest,
I stared
at that thick black length
whose neck, all summer,
was a river,
whose body was the same river—
whose whole life was a flowing—
whose tail could lash—
who, footless, could spin
like a black tendril and hang
upside down in the branches
gazing at everything
out of seed-shaped red eyes
as it swung to and fro,
the tail making its quick sizzle,
the head lifted
like a black spout.
Was it alive?
Of course it was alive.
This was the quick wrist of early summer,
when everything was alive.
Then I knelt down, I saw
that the snake was gone—
that the face, like a black bud,
had pushed out of the broken petals
of the old year, and it had emerged
on the hundred hoops of its belly,
the tongue sputtering its thread of smoke,
the work of the pearl-colored lung
never pausing, as it pushed
from the chin,
from the crown of the head,
leaving only an empty skin
for the mice to nibble and the breeze to blow
as over the oak leaves and across the creek
and up the far hill it had gone,
damp and shining in the starlight
like a rollicking finger of snow.
Morning Walk
Little by little
the ocean
empties its pockets—
foam and fluff;
and the long, tangled ornateness
of seaweed;
and the whelks,
ribbed or with ivory knobs,
but so knocked about
in the sea's blue hands
that their story is at length only
about the wholeness of destruction—
they come one by one
to the shore
to the shallows
to the mussel-dappled rocks
to the rise to dryness
to the edge of the town
to offer, to the measure that we will accept it,
this wisdom:
though the hour be whole
though the minute be deep and rich
though the heart be a singer of hot red songs
and the mind be as lightning,
what all the music will come to is nothing,
only the sheets of fog and the fog's blue bell—
you do not believe it now, you are not supposed to.
You do not believe it yet—but you will—
morning by singular morning,
and shell by broken shell.
Rain, Tree, Thunder and Lightning
Clouds rolled
from the west—
then they thickened,
then thunder
bucked and boiled
toward the blown woods—
then lightning
slammed down
and opened the tree—
the way a tooth
would open a flower.
I fell down
in the steaming grass,
in the moss,
in the slow things
I was used to
while the branches snapped,
while they shrieked,
while the tree
spat out its solid heart
all over the ground.
Often enough,
even in easy summer,
I think of death—
how it is known to come
by dark, godforsaken inches.
And then I remember
the wheels of the wind,
the heels of the clouds—
the kick of the gold.
What do I hope for
from brother death?
May there be no quibbling.
Like the god that he is
may he slide to the ground
on his golden dial;
and there I will be,
for one last moment,
broken but burning,
like a golden tree.
The Rapture
All summer
I wandered the fields
that were thickening
every morning,
every rainfall,
with weeds and blossoms,
with the long loops
of the shimmering, and the extravagant—
pale as flames they rose
and fell back,
replete and beautiful—
that was all there was—
and I too
once or twice, at least,
felt myself rising,
my boots
touching suddenly the tops of the weeds,
the blue and silky air—
listen,
passion did it,
called me forth,
addled me,
stripped me clean
then covered me with the cloth of happiness—
I think
there is no other prize,
only rapture the gleaming,
rapture the illogical the weightless—
whether it be for the perfect shapeliness
of something you love—
like an old German song—
or of someone—
or the dark floss of the earth itself,
heavy and electric.
At the edge of sweet sanity open
such wild, blind wings.
Fox
You don't ever know where
a sentence will take you, depending
on its roll and fold. I was walking
over the dunes when I saw
the red fox asleep under the green
branches of the pine. It flared up
in the sweet order of its being,
the tail that was over the muzzle
lifting in airy amazement
and the fire of the eyes followed
and the pricked ears and the thin
barrel body and the four
athletic legs in their black stockings and it
came to me how the polish of the world changes
everything, I was hot I was cold I was almost
dead of delight. Of course the mind keeps
cool in its hidden palace—yes, the mind takes
a long time, is otherwise occupied than by
happiness, and deep breathing. Still,
at last, it comes too, running
like a wild thing, to be taken
with its twin sister, breath. So I stood
on the pale, peach-colored sand, watching the fox
as it opened like a flower, and I began
softly, to pick among the vast assortment of words
that it should run again and again across the page
that you again and again should shiver with praise.
Gratitude
I was walking the field,
in the fatness of spring
the field was flooded with water, water stained black,
black from the tissues of leaves, oak mostly,
but also
beech, also
blueberry, bay.
Then the big hawk rose. In her eyes
I could see how thoroughly she
hated me. And there was her nest, like a round raft
with three white eggs in it, just
above the black water.
***
She floats away
climbs the invisible air
on her masculine wings
then glides back
agitated responsible
climbs again angry
does not look at me.
Halfway to my knees
in the black water
I look up
I cannot stop looking up
how much time has passed
I can hardly see her now
swinging in that blue blaze.
***
There are days when I rise from my desk desolate.
There are days when the field water and the slender grasses
and the wild hawks
have it all over the rest of us
whether or not they make clear sense, ride the beautiful
long spine of grammar, whether or not they rhyme.
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
in the moonlight, but I can't hear
anything, I can't see anything—
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker—
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing—
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet—
all of it
happening
beyond all seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.
Dogs
Over
the wide field
the dark deer
went running,
five dogs
screaming
at his flanks,
at his heels,
my own two darlings
among them
lunging and buckling
with desire
as they leaped
for the throat
as they tried
and tried again
to bring him down.
At the lake
the deer
plunged—
I could hear
the green wind
of his breath
tearing
but the long legs
never stopped
till he clambered
up the far shore.
The dogs
moaned and screeched
they flung themselves
on the grass
panting
and steaming.