Owls and Other Fantasies

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by Mary Oliver


  We tried to kill him, with sleeping pills, but he only slept for a long time, many hours, then woke with his usual brightness. We decided nature knows best and carried him back to the water and let him go, drifting, but he sank, so we waded out and got hold of him, all of us dripping wet as we carried him back inside.

  January passed. As we entered February he ate voraciously, made a hundred messes on well-placed paper towels, or somewhere near them. By that time he knew the routines of the day, and expressed vigorous excitement toward the satisfaction of his anticipation. We had a storm from the southeast and I found along the shore a feast of soft-shelled clams; he ate until his eyes filled with sleep. The broken part of the wing hung now by a single tendon; we clipped it away. One withered foot literally fell from him, along with the first section of leg bone, so he was a one-winged, one-legged gull. But still patient, attentive.

  And he had visitors. He liked to have his head touched, his feathers roughed up a little and then smoothed—something a two-legged gull can do for himself. He would sport with his water bowl. He would open the great beak for a feather, then fling it across the floor. He liked applause.

  Was he in pain? Our own doctor, who came to see him, did not think so. Did we do right or wrong to lengthen his days? Even now we do not know. Sometimes he was restless. Then I would take him with me into the room where I write, and play music—Schubert, Mahler, Brahms. Soon he would become quiet, and, dipping his head, would retire into the private chamber of himself.

  But the rough-and-tumble work of dying was going on, even in the quiet body. The middle of February passed. When I picked him up the muscles along the breast were so thin I feared for the tender skin lying across the crest of the bone. And still the eyes were full of the spices of amusement.

  He was, of course, a piece of the sky. His eyes said so. This is not fact, this is the other part of knowing something, when there is no proof, but neither is there any way toward disbelief. Imagine lifting the lid from a jar and finding it filled not with darkness but with light. Bird was like that. Startling, elegant, alive.

  But the day we knew must come did at last, and then the non-responsiveness of his eyes was terrible. It was late February when I came downstairs, as usual, before dawn. Then returned upstairs, to M. The sweep and play of the morning was just beginning, its tender colors reaching everywhere. “The little gull has died,” I said to M., as I lifted the shades to the morning light.

  Wrens

  here I go

  into the wide gardens of

  wastefields blue glass clear glass

  and other rubbishes blinking from the

  dust from the fox tracks among the

  roots and risings of

  buttercups joe pye honey

  suckle the queen’s

  lace and her

  blue sailors

  the little wrens

  have carried a hundred sticks into

  an old rusted pail and now they are

  singing in the curtains of leaves they are

  fluttering down to the bog they are dipping

  their darling heads down to wet

  their whistles how happy they are to be

  diligent at last

  foolish birds

  Some Herons

  A blue preacher

  flew toward the swamp,

  in slow motion.

  On the leafy banks,

  an old Chinese poet,

  hunched in the white gown of his wings,

  was waiting.

  The water

  was the kind of dark silk

  that has silver lines

  shot through it

  when it is touched by the wind

  or is splashed upward,

  in a small, quick flower,

  by the life beneath it.

  The preacher

  made his difficult landing,

  his skirts up around his knees.

  The poet’s eyes

  flared, just as a poet’s eyes

  are said to do

  when the poet is awakened

  from the forest of meditation.

  It was summer.

  It was only a few moments past the sun’s rising,

  which meant that the whole long sweet day

  lay before them.

  They greeted each other,

  rumpling their gowns for an instant,

  and then smoothing them.

  They entered the water,

  and instantly two more herons—

  equally as beautiful—

  joined them and stood just beneath them

  in the black, polished water

  where they fished, all day.

  September

  I walk through a grove of pines and startle the nighthawk from the limb where it has been lying, resting or sleeping. The bird is similar in color to the gray limb, and lies along not across it, so is almost invisible. On its hawk-like wings it rises into the sky, and vanishes.

  The nighthawk doesn’t nest here but only stops a few days on its long travels. I know this one must be tired of flight, and I am sorry to have disturbed it.

  The next day, walking the same woods, I approach with care. The bird is again resting on the limb, its eyes shut. I back away and do not disturb it.

  The following year, almost to the day, I enter the pinewoods and remember the nighthawk just in time—in time to be cautious and silent. And the bird is there, in the same tree, on the same limb, in the pinewoods that is so pretty and so restful, apparently, to both of us.

  Crow

  Every morning

  crow

  steps

  along the beach

  as though he found the world

  brand-new,

  and wonderful,

  and, without a doubt,

  made especially for him.

  The eiders stare,

  the black ducks are busy

  with their own affairs

  as he marches

  along the wrack line

  on his sturdy feet

  to the bounty of stranded sea worms,

  crabs,

  abandoned bags of popcorn—

  “oh yes,” his big black beak seems to say,

  “this is good,

  here is breakfast and lunch both,

  and as for dinner,

  I’ll be back.

  What a good world!”

  I wish we could be friends,

  but when he sees me

  daring to look at him

  he opens his strong arms

  that are dressed, always, in the darkest ribbons,

  and floats off—

  but only a little way

  and he’s down again on the sandy track—

  and who has seen yet anything cleaner,

  bolder,

  more gleaming, more certain of its philosophy

  than the eye he turns back?

  White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

  Coming down

  out of the freezing sky

  with its depths of light,

  like an angel,

  or a buddha with wings,

  it was beautiful

  and accurate,

  striking the snow and whatever was there

  with a force that left the imprint

  of the tips of its wings—

  five feet apart—and the grabbing

  thrust of its feet,

  and the indentation of what had been running

  through the white valleys

  of the snow—

  and then it rose, gracefully,

  and flew back to the frozen marshes,

  to lurk there,

  like a little lighthouse,

  in the blue shadows—

  so I thought:

  maybe death

  isn’t darkness, after all,

  but so much light

  wrapping itself around us—

  as soft as feathers—

  that
we are instantly weary

  of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,

  not without amazement,

  and let ourselves be carried,

  as through the translucence of mica,

  to the river

  that is without the least dapple or shadow—

  that is nothing but light—scalding, aortal light—

  in which we are washed and washed

  out of our bones.

  Starlings in Winter

  Chunky and noisy,

  but with stars in their black feathers,

  they spring from the telephone wire

  and instantly

  they are acrobats

  in the freezing wind.

  And now, in the theater of air,

  they swing over buildings,

  dipping and rising;

  they float like one stippled star

  that opens,

  becomes for a moment fragmented,

  then closes again;

  and you watch

  and you try

  but you simply can’t imagine

  how they do it

  with no articulated instruction, no pause,

  only the silent confirmation

  that they are this notable thing,

  this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin

  over and over again,

  full of gorgeous life.

  Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

  even in the leafless winter,

  even in the ashy city.

  I am thinking now

  of grief, and of getting past it;

  I feel my boots

  trying to leave the ground,

  I feel my heart

  pumping hard. I want

  to think again of dangerous and noble things.

  I want to be light and frolicsome.

  I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

  as though I had wings.

  I Looked Up

  I looked up and there it was

  among the green branches of the pitchpines—

  thick bird,

  a ruffle of fire trailing over the shoulders and down the back—

  color of copper, iron, bronze—

  lighting up the dark branches of the pine.

  What misery to be afraid of death.

  What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven.

  When I made a little sound

  it looked at me, then it looked past me.

  Then it rose, the wings enormous and opulent,

  and, as I said, wreathed in fire.

  Long Afternoon at the

  Edge of Little Sister Pond

  As for life,

  I’m humbled,

  I’m without words

  sufficient to say

  how it has been hard as flint,

  and soft as a spring pond,

  both of these

  and over and over,

  and long pale afternoons besides,

  and so many mysteries

  beautiful as eggs in a nest,

  still unhatched

  though warm and watched over

  by something I have never seen—

  a tree angel, perhaps,

  or a ghost of holiness.

  Every day I walk out into the world

  to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

  It suffices, it is all comfort—

  along with human love,

  dog love, water love, little-serpent love,

  sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds

  flying among the scarlet flowers.

  There is hardly time to think about

  stopping, and lying down at last

  to the long afterlife, to the tenderness

  yet to come, when

  time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

  and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.

  As for death,

  I can’t wait to be the hummingbird,

  can you?

  AFTERWORD

  Backyard

  I had no time to haul out all

  the dead stuff so it hung, limp

  or dry, wherever the wind swung it

  over or down or across. All summer

  it stayed that way, untrimmed, and

  thickened. The paths grew

  damp and uncomfortable and mossy until

  nobody could get through but a mouse or a

  shadow. Blackberries, ferns, leaves, litter

  totally without direction management

  supervision. The birds loved it.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  “Wild Geese” comes from Dream Work, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986.

  “June,” “Yes! No!,” “Hummingbirds,” “Wrens,” “September” and “I Looked Up” are from White Pine, Harcourt, 1991.

  The essay “Owls” is from Blue Pastures, Harcourt, 1995. It originally appeared in Orion and was reprinted in The Best American Essays 1996, Robert Atwan, series editor.

  “The Swan,” “The Kingfisher,” “Herons in Winter in the Frozen Marsh,” “The Kookaburras,” “The Loon on Oak-Head Pond,” “Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard,” “Some Herons,” and “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” are from House of Light, Beacon Press, 1990.

  “White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field” appeared originally in The New Yorker.

  “Hawk” is from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press, 1992.

  THE FOLLOWING TITLES HAVE APPEARED IN PERIODICALS:

  “Backyard” and “Bird,” Appalachia

  “Spring,” Onearth

  “The Dipper” and “Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond,” Shenandoah

  “Catbird,” The Southern Review

  “Goldfinches,” Spirituality and Health

  “While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing,” Spiritus

  My thanks to all editors and permissions coordinators.

  Beacon Press

  25 Beacon Street

  Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892

  www.beacon.org

  Beacon Press books

  are published under the auspices of

  the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

  © 2003 by Mary Oliver

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the United States of America

  09 08 07 06 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO

  specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

  Text design by Sara Eisenman

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Oliver, Mary

  Owls and other fantasies / Mary Oliver.

  p.cm.

  ISBN 978-0-8070-9682-6 (pbk.: acid-free paper)

  eISBN 978-0-8070-9682-6

  1. Birds—Poetry. I. Title.

  ps 3565.l5o95 2003

  811’.54—dc21

  2003013336

 

 

 


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