Poem of the Day

I love finding new (to me) poems by my favorite poets. This one came from Poetry 180.

White-Eyes
By Mary Oliver

In winter
   all the singing is in
      the tops of the trees
         where the wind-bird

with its white eyes
   shoves and pushes
      among the branches.
         Like any of us

he wants to go to sleep,
   but he’s restless—
      he has an idea,
         and slowly it unfolds

from under his beating wings
   as long as he stays awake
      But his big, round music, after all,
         is too breathy to last.

So, it’s over.
   In the pine-crown
      he makes his nest,
         he’s done all he can.

I don’t know the name of this bird,
   I only imagine his glittering beak
         while the clouds—

which he has summoned
   from the north—
      which he has taught
         to be mild, and silent—

thicken, and begin to fall
   into the world below
      like stars, or the feathers
         of some unimaginable bird

that loves us,
   that is asleep now, and silent—
      that has turned itself
         into snow.

My cousin and her husband came over for dinner and we watched the Opening Ceremonies. It’s over 2 hours past my bedtime and I didn’t have anything on tap to post. Thankfully there was an e-mail from my poetry buddy waiting for me!

So we already know that Mary Oliver rules. Now that it’s August, I wanted to post this poem. I’ve been picking as many blackberries as I can…

August
By Mary Oliver

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.

Thanks to Katie for sending this one along.

Messenger
By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

My file’s getting a little low again, but I see we haven’t heard from Mary Oliver in a while, and I can always find one of her poems to post. P.S. No PotD tomorrow because I’ll be out of town.

The Loon
By Mary Oliver

Not quite four a.m., when the rapture of being alive
strikes me from sleep, and I rise
from the comfortable bed and go
to another room, where my books are lined up
in their neat and colorful rows. How

magical they are! I choose one
and open it. Soon
I have wandered in over the waves of the words
to the temple of thought.

                  And then I hear
outside, over the actual waves, the small,
perfect voice of the loon. He is also awake,
and with his heavy head uplifted he calls out
to the fading moon, to the pink flush
swelling in the east that, soon,
will become the long, reasonable day.

                        Inside the house
it is still dark, except for the pool of lamplight
in which I am sitting.

                  I do not close the book.

Neither, for a long while, do I read on.

I fell in love with this poem the first time I read it. Apparently, so did Margo Hennebach. Mary Oliver’s influence is far-reaching!

Wild Geese
By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

When I read this poem, I immediately thought of a song by Margo Hennebach that I love, entitled All That You Are, which I often listen to in times of self-doubt.

The Journey
By Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver is so adept at taking a small occurence and making a wonderful poem out of it!

I think it’s high time for another one from Mary Oliver.

Luna
By Mary Oliver

In the early curtains
   of the dusk
      it flew,
         a slow galloping

this way and that way
   through the trees
      and under the trees.
         I live

in the open mindedness
   of not knowing enough
      about anything.
         It was beautiful.

It was silent.
   It didn’t even have a mouth.
      But it wanted something,
         it had a purpose

and a few precious hours
   to find it,
      and I suppose it did.
         The next evening

it lay on the ground
   like a broken leaf
      and didn’t move,
         which hurt my heart

which is another small thing
   that doesn’t know much.
      When this happened it was about
         the middle of summer,

which also has its purposes
   and only so many precious hours.
      How quietly,
         and not with any assignment from us,

or even a small hint
   of understanding,
      everything that needs to be done
         is done.

I think it’s time for more Mary Oliver.

I’m sure you’re all in Mary Oliver withdrawal, so here’s one of hers. She excels at making the ordinary seem truly important.

Mindful
By Mary Oliver

Every day
   I see or hear
      something
         that more or less

kills me
   with delight,
      that leaves me
         like a needle

in the haystack
   of light.
      It was what I was born for—
         to look, to listen,

to lose myself
   inside this soft world—
      to instruct myself
         over and over

in joy,
   and acclamation.
      Nor am I talking
         about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
   the very extravagant—
      but of the ordinary,
         the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
   Oh, good scholar,
      I say to myself,
         how can you help

but grow wise
   with such teachings
      as these—
         the untrimmable light

of the world,
   the ocean’s shine,
      the prayers that are made
         out of grass?

Here’s another one from Mary Oliver. It’s amazing, of course.

When Death Comes
By Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.Here’s another one from Mary Oliver. It’s amazing, of course.

When Death Comes
By Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

I could never get enough of Mary Oliver!

Mockingbird
By Mary Oliver

Always there is something worth saying
     about glory, about gratitude.
But I went walking a long time across the dunes
     and in all that time spoke not a single word,
nor wrote one down, nor even thought anything at all
     at the window of my heart.

Speechless the snowy tissue of clouds passed over, and more came,
     and speechless they passed also.
The beach plums hung on the hillsides, their branches
     heavy with blossoms; yet not one of them said a word.

And nothing there anyway knew, don’t we know, what a word is,
     or could parse down from the general liquidity of feeling
to the spasm and bull’s eye of the moment, or the logic,
     or the instance,
trimming the fingernails of happiness, entering the house
     of rhetoric.

And yet there was one there eloquent enough,
     all this time,
and not quietly but in a rhapsody of reply, though with
     an absence of reason, of querulous pestering. The mockingbird
was making of himself
     an orchestra, a choir, a dozen flutes,

a tambourine, an outpost of perfect and exact observation,
     all afternoon rapping and whistling
on the athlete’s lung-ful of leafy air. You could not
     imagine a steadier talker, hunched deep in the tree,
then floating forth decorative and boisterous and mirthful,
     all eye and fluttering feathers. You could not imagine
a sweeter prayer.

Mary Oliver is just so incredibly amazing…

Blue Iris
By Mary Oliver

Now that I’m free to be myself, who am I?

Can’t fly, can’t run, and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

         ”What’s that you’re doing?”
the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

“What’s that you’re doing?” whispers the wind, pausing
in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.
It doesn’t happen all of a sudden, you know.

“Doesn’t it?” says the wind, and breaks open, releasing
distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,
the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

Since we talked about Mary Oliver yesterday, I thought I’d post one of hers. The possibilities are endless!

“Just a minute,” said a voice…
By Mary Oliver

“Just a minute,” said a voice in the weeds.
So I stood still
in the day’s exquisite early morning light
and so I didn’t crush with my great feet
any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by
where I was passing by
on my way to the blueberry fields,
and maybe it was the toad
and maybe it was the June beetle
and maybe it was the pink and tender worm
who does his work without limbs or eyes
and does it well
or maybe it was the walking stick, still frail
and walking humbly by, looking for a tree,
or maybe, like Blake’s wondrous meeting, it was
the elves, carrying one of their own
on a rose-petal coffin away, away
into the deep grasses. After awhile
the quaintest voice said, “Thank you.” And then there was silence.
For the rest, I would keep you wondering.

I love this one. So short, so simple, so incredibly cool!

The Old Poets of China
By Mary Oliver

Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

This poem just about knocked me over when I read it. It starts off so innocently and ends so powerfully.

The Arrowhead
By Mary Oliver

The arrowhead,
which I found beside the river,
was glittering and pointed.
I picked it up, and said,
“Now, it’s mine.”
I thought of showing it to friends.
I thought of putting it—such an imposing trinket—
in a little box, on my desk.
Halfway home, past the cut fields,
the old ghost
stood under the hickories.
“I would rather drink the wind,” he said,
“I would rather eat mud and die
than steal as you steal,
than lie as you lie.”

I read Mary Oliver’s Why I Wake Early yesterday and it’s a lovely collection of poems (published in 2004). I thought I’d post the title poem today.

Why I Wake Early
By Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety—

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light—
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Monte sent me this poem, so I thought I’d share it.

The Lily
By Mary Oliver

Night after night
   darkness
      enters the face
         of the lily

which, lightly,
   closes its five walls
      around itself,
         and its purse

of honey,
   and its fragrance,
      and is content
         to stand there

in the garden,
   not quite sleeping,
      and, maybe,
         saying in lily language

some small words
   we can’t hear
      even when there is no wind
         anywhere,

its lips
   are so secret,
      its tongue
         is so hidden—

or, maybe,
   it says nothing at all
      but just stands there
         with the patience

of vegetables
   and saints
      until the whole earth has turned around
         and the silver moon

becomes the golden sun—
   as the lily absolutely knew it would,
      which is itself, isn’t it,
         the perfect prayer?

Nature-inspired poetry isn’t usually my cup of tea, but Mary Oliver’s work is different and I really like it!

The Hummingbird
By Mary Oliver

It’s morning, and again I am that lucky person who is in it.
And again it is spring,
and there are the apple trees,
and the hummingbird in its branches.
On the green wheel of his wings
he hurries from blossom to blossom,
which is his work, that he might live.

He is a gatherer of the fine honey of promise,
and truly I go in envy
of the ruby fire at his throat,
and his accurate, quick tongue,
and his single-mindedness.

Meanwhile the knives of ambition are stirring
down there in the darkness behind my eyes,
and I should go inside now to my desk and my pages.
But still I stand under the trees, happy and desolate,
wanting for myself such a satisfying coat
and brilliant work.

I really like Mary Oliver’s poetry and I’m looking forward to talking about it with my aunt’s family at Thanksgiving! (I first heard of Mary Oliver from my aunt’s father.)

Walking To Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit In The Next Days And Weeks
By Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled—
I’m wading along

in the sunlight—
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead—
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon—
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from—
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind—

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage—
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

I went to a bookstore with Jennifer and Killy and got a book of Mary Oliver’s poetry. Here’s a selection.

Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me
By Mary Oliver

Last night
the rain
spoke to me
slowly, saying,

what joy
to come falling
out of the brisk cloud,
to be happy again

in a new way
on the earth!
That’s what it said
as it dropped,

smelling of iron,
and vanished
like a dream of the ocean
into the branches

and the grass below.
Then it was over.
The sky cleared.
I was standing

under a tree.
The tree was a tree
with happy leaves,
and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky
that were also themselves
at the moment
at which moment

my right hand
was holding my left hand
which was holding the tree
which was filled with stars

and the soft rain—
imagine! imagine!
the long and wondrous journeys
still to be ours.