10 February 2020

A Mary Oliver poem

Morning Poem


Every morning
the world
is created. 
Under the orange 

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again 

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands 

of summer lilies. 
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails 

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere. 
And if your spirit
carries within it 

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging --- 

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted --- 

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly, 
every morning, 

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy, 
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray. 


from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver 
© Mary Oliver

Starting Over after a 2-Year Hiatus: A Story




I was so worried about being empty-headed that I filled and filled my head with interest and information and activity until I overflowed.  What a waste, I thought.  Unlike music filling and spilling, this was less touching than intrusive.  And, actually, I had to sit and let it all settle—use some up and let the rest settle—before I noticed that a little emptiness allowed for my soul to expand.  Soul is the opposite of ego, I think.  Brain activity expanded my ego, but this expansion took some of the “I” out. 
Perhaps I am still capable of asserting my skills, but that isn’t the pull of the soul in the moment.   The pull is to get up, move outdoors and walk.   We are mid-winter here in the Northeastern United States, so the sun lingers longer each day—at least daylight is longer even in the rain.  Winter hasn’t really shown up.  One 32 degree day and one tornado do not a winter make, but make my thoughts turn toward climate change.  If I’m ever to walk out of doors, I had better do it before it's impossible.
Winter here has meant road work every few blocks and the noise that accompanies it.  I don’t feel up to wrestling with that.  Standing in my yard to sense which way my path might lead, I notice buds greening themselves on Azalea bushes and Dogwood trees.  The Crocus heads peeping out of the earth two months early are dwarfed.  They didn’t have enough cold to hibernate, rest, and grow underground. 
They remind me of the fact that fewer species of plants and animals survived last season’s storms and fires.  I recently heard that it had reached 60 degrees in the Arctic.  I wouldn’t surprise me to hear that we had become un-moored from our place in the solar system, and were about to drift away with unknown results.  I try to imagine President Trump guiding the ship of state through that emergency, with no belief in science and with a full crew who is not privy to his navigational charts.  Non-cooperation lost us our leadership as nations unite around the earth.  We may be more powerful than any three of nations put together, but that doesn’t mean we can navigate the universe.  The whole earth would have to choose a path; we cannot detach our land mass from it.
There goes my head again.  To drop out of the rushing panic such thoughts bring, I get on my knees near a bed of soil that could be a garden.  I wrap my mind around my own land mass—this quarter acre which represents my citizenship, a stability I hold onto despite ensuing storms and hordes of displaced people on the move around the earth. 
I think I feel the earth warm and soften under me, and imagine I hear a sigh.  Walking anywhere else leaves my mind.  I could use loving care and so could my earth.  No, this is not MY earth.  I don’t own this spot so much as it owns me—never mind the jokes about mortgages and related costs, paperwork, and permits.  Never mind the taxes I have to pay to village, town, county, state and country.  Suddenly, I want to have a better relationship with this earth, one in which I accept who she is and learn how I can take part in her healing. 
I’m late.  I know several people who have been doing this all their lives.  Maybe now I get why.  My soul has grown enough to understand that, but it stops expanding the minute I think competitively.  So what if others have been doing this for decades?   I spent the same years following a leading to teach and to purchase land.  Now here, again, I’m being pulled in a definite direction.  Hallelujah!  It’s about time. 
 I rip up a tiny area of lawn before going back inside, feeling as if I’d been in prayer.  My knees ache.  I’ll have to contend with physical limits, but I can, I think.  To begin with, I’ll reread Braiding Sweetgrass.  I’ll research what is and who is indigenous here.  I’ll move slowly.  As Theodore Roethke put it, in his poem “The Waking”:

The Waking
. . . .
Great Nature has another thing to do   
To you and me; so take the lively air,   
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   
What falls away is always. And is near.   
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   
I learn by going where I have to go.





#  Susan Chast, copyright 2020