Is anyone else drawn to the work of Mary Oliver? She one (of many) of my favourite poets with a spiritual leaning. Her poetry has a deeply powerful way of revealing the divine in nature, of bringing the cosmos to earth.
To begin, this poem feels apt for Halloween!
The Chance To Love Everything
Mary Oliver
All summer I made friends with the creatures nearby --- they flowed through the fields and under the tent walls, or padded through the door, grinning through their many teeth, looking for seeds, suet, sugar; muttering and humming, opening the breadbox, happiest when there was milk and music. But once in the night I heard a sound outside the door, the canvas bulged slightly ---something was pressing inward at eye level. I watched, trembling, sure I had heard the click of claws, the smack of lips outside my gauzy house --- I imagined the red eyes, the broad tongue, the enormous lap. Would it be friendly too? Fear defeated me. And yet, not in faith and not in madness but with the courage I thought my dream deserved, I stepped outside. It was gone. Then I whirled at the sound of some shambling tonnage. Did I see a black haunch slipping back through the trees? Did I see the moonlight shining on it? Did I actually reach out my arms toward it, toward paradise falling, like the fading of the dearest, wildest hope --- the dark heart of the story that is all the reason for its telling?
I love poetry, I particularly love this poet, thanks for posting this, Lula. I have not read her for awhile and had forget (surely not) the particular beauty in her visionary words.
And this poem really does speak to me on many levels.
You are both deeply welcome, I am truly humbled by the channel she is for the expressions beyond the edges of this we call reality. Such timeless truths we already know...yet often forget.
So glad again that you started this thread, Lula. I have been rediscovering her poems tonight. I remember finding this poem some years ago and feeling like it was meant just for me.
Wild Geese
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.
I have had this poem in my files for some time, it is very meaningful to me and I read it every so often; so today I opened the file and I realized it was by Mary Oliver! I had forgotten that it was her poem. I hope it is not too morbid for anyone, I consider it very hopeful.
When death comes
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 the 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 the 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.
OOh.....I love this one Lady T. It very much speaks to my heart, mind and soul as I truly want to go out of this life into the next whooping and hollering about what a wild ride it's been! :)
Life is....very much for the living!
__________________
"Love one another but make not a bond of love. Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls" ~~~~Khalil Gibran~~~~
