The Poet Dreams of the Mountain

Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.

I want to climb some old gray mountain, slowly, taking

the rest of my lifetime to do it....

I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,

and peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.

All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!...

In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall.

As so often happens when reading Mary's poem, the coincidence of her words with my life events startles me.  For instance, just this morning I was reviewing my itinerary for my trip to Guyana next week, and there in the middle of it is an overnight hike that gains 6,000 feet in elevation and ends at Jordan falls. 

Then not even 5 minutes later I read this poem about a slow, long climb up a mountain.

That image of me, walking up a winding path of a mountain path with nothing to do but to look, think, remember, and place one foot in front of the other brings me solace this Monday morning. 

How did Mary know that we ache for the sense of eternal wholeness that a long slow hike or a long slow life can bring?

Do you have this ache too?  How do you respond to it?

About Angels and About Trees - February 11, 2011

Where do angels
        fly in the firmament,
and how many can dance
        on the head of a pin?

Well, I don't care
        about that pin dance,
what I know is that
        they rest, sometimes,
in the tops of the trees

  and you can see them,
        or almost see them,
or, anyway, think: what a
        wonderful idea.

I have lost as you and
        others have possibly lost a
beloved one,
        and wonder, where are they now?

The trees, anyway, are
        miraculous, full of
angels (ideas);even
        empty they are a
good place to look, to put
        the heart at rest--all those
leaves breathing the air, so


peaceful and diligent, and certainly
        ready to be
the resting place of
        strange, winged creatures
that we, in this world, have loved

I have never lived on the ocean, but when I visit the eternal vista holds me in blissful transcendence.  So too have come to me the vistas of western mountains where you can see forever.  It was with some trepidation then when we moved to central Florida – no body of water, no mountains, no suns or moons rising on the horizon – just trees filling the view wherever you turn.

Florida has taught me to look up. Now I stare up into the branches as I might onto the ocean or from a mountain.  I strain to see who lives there, for surely there are some passing spring warblers daring me to behold their beauty.  Even if I don’t see any movement, I can hear the earth’s pulse through the miracle of the trees, and it echoes in my heart to last me through the day.

Today I am up in the level of the trees at a hotel at the University of Georgia, Athens. The trees are sprinkled with snow – natural angel dust to drug the soul with joy.

What do you see in a tree?

The Kitten

More amazed than anything 
I took the perfectly black 
stillborn kitten 
with the one large eye 
in the center of its small forehead 
from the house cat's bed 
and buried it in a field 
behind the house. 

I suppose I could have given it 
to a museum, 
I could have called the local 
newspaper. 

But instead I took it out into the field 
and opened the earth 
and put it back 
saying, it was real, 
saying, life is infinitely inventive, 
saying, what other amazements 
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes, 

I think I did right to go out alone 
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place 
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.

I just read a critique of Mary Oliver's poems where the author concluded that Mary is giving up too much information to the reader.   "...She takes her poems too far by giving the reader the answer to a puzzle and not letting them try for themselves.  Poetry is meant to make the reader think, wondering what the author was talking about or what they meant.  Instead, she leads the reader through explanation within her work, or flatly states a meaning.  By doing so, her poems read as though she’s talking, taking the musicality out of them."

Well, I've been on Mary myself over this near year of rising with her. Sometimes I fuss that she gives not enough of an answer, and at other times I am relieved that I hear her wisdom, her actions, and her account of her actions.  I spend enough time alone in my thoughts every day. What a pleasure to hear what someone else is doing out in the fields that are beyond "wrongdoing and rightdoing" as Rumi pens.  In some ways, her poems are stories and not poems. This is more evident in her books where the selections move in and out of prose.

I admit too to at times disagreeing with her conclusion, her thoughts, her bearings.  But what am I disagreeing with? Am I saying she is wrong to conclude this way or that, and to pass on to those readers what is right and good for her?  Or am I saying that I mourn that she is separate from me and has her own way about her?  She's got 20 years on me, is from New England, and is a very different creature than me.  Is this what I wish to argue with as I raise my fist to the sun's first rays on the mornings when Mary disturb me?  I think not.  My beef (and belief) is this, "I am not alone in this world, and refuse to carry on as if it were so."  

Mary's poems, with a conclusion or not, and whether they feel right or wrong to me, challenge me to use all that I have to see our interdependence, and to have faith that so much love and compassion is still to be born.




What is still to be born in you?

The Fist

There are days
when the sun goes down
like a fist,
though of course

if you see anything
in the heavens this way
you had better get

your eyes checked
or, better still,
your diminished spirit.
The heavens

have no fist,
or wouldn't they have been
shaking it
for a thousand years now,

and even
longer than that,
at the dull, brutish
ways of mankind -

heaven's own
creation?
Instead: such patience!
Such willingness

to let us continue!
To hear,
little by little,
the voices -

only, so far, in
pockets of the world -
suggesting the possibilities

of peace?

Keep looking.
Behold, how the fist opens
with invitation.

The sun sets, closing the fist of light so that in the dark we may reflect upon the shadows of our souls. Each night we have the opportunity to review the day and where we have participated in harm in the world. Also too how our celebrations have given life to others. We have the day blind stars above us who do not judge, but hold witness to what we have done. Then, in the morning, after a night of reckoning, the rising sun opens a fist and the fingers of heaven might even wiggle beckoning us in a come hither motion. “You may begin anew” invites the burgeoning light. Oh how I love these mornings – a new start. Every 24 hours a reckoning and a beckoning.

What would you begin again this day?

Letter to ______________ - October 3, 2010

You have broken my heart.

Just as well. Now

I am learning to rise

Above all that, learning

The thin life, waking up

Simply to praise

Everything in this world that is

Strong and beautiful

Always-the trees, the rocks,

The fields, the news

From heaven, the laughter

That comes back

All the same. Just as well. Time

To read books, rake the lawn

In peace, sweep the floor, scour

The faces of the pans,

Anything .And I have been so

Diligent it is almost

Over, I am growing myself

As strong as rock, as a tree

Which, if I put my arms around it, does not

Lean away. It is a

Wonderful life. Comfortable.

I read the papers. Maybe

I will go on a cruise, maybe I will

Cross the entire ocean, more than once.

Whatever you think, I have scarcely

Thought of you. Whatever you imagine,

It never really happened. Only a few

Evenings of nonsense. Whatever you believe-

Dear one, dear one-

Do not believe this letter.

I wonder how many people each of us would like a letter like this to. I am thinking of one or two. How, after our parting I did not know how to deal with the pain and my heart that had broken open. So I turned without and as my heart mended it healed a little bit larger to take in the beauty of the world around me, and in me. I was determined that love would not destroy me, but grow me. If I could but just let those of past now how well I’ve done without them – my parrot companions, my father, my Mayan. What I would also tell them that still in the night, they come to me in dreams, and in the morning the heart sighs and I must rewrite that letter and the story of my life.

To whom would you send such a letter?

Coming to God: First Days

Lord, what shall I do that I

Can’t quiet myself?

Here is the bread, and

Here is the cup, and

I can’t quiet myself.

To enter the language of transformation!

To learn the importance of stillness,

With one’s hands folded!

When will my eyes of rejoicing turn peaceful?

When will my joyful feel grow still?

When will my heart stop its prancing

As over the summer grass?

Lord, I would run for you, loving the miles for your sake.

I would climb the highest tree

To be that much closer.

Lord, I will learn also to kneel down

Into the world of the invisible,

The inscrutable and the everlasting.

Then I will move no more than the leaves of a tree

On a day of no wind,

Bathed in light,

Like the wanderer who has come home at lat

And kneels in peace, done with all unnecessary thing;.

Every motion; even words.

Beyond loving then, there is stillness, emptiness, death. So much of Mary's work points us towards joy, and running towards union with love. At some point though even that is a superficial desire, a strategy to heal ourselves and be whole. How much must we let go? I suppose when a close one dies, we shock our system into contemplating that there is nothing but letting go to be done. It consumes us. Mary loses her poetry and bows down, no longer Mary of words. I lose my birds and bow down, no longer LoraKim of parrots. Ah. Nothing left but bowing and light. So I begin my day, turning to the east, turning over, in a deep bow to the sun.

What do you have left to lose?

After Her Death

I am trying to find the lesson for tomorrow.
Matthew something. Which lectionary?
I have not forgotten the Way, but a little,
the way to the Way.
the trees keep whispering peace, peace,
and the birds in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are content.
They open their wings so easily, and fly.
So. It is still possible.

I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.



Mary has lost her partner of many years I have learned. So, we have our first poem of this difficult time for her. She turns to birds and trees and her beloved pond, and something more. Always something more. For surely, such love, and such pain cannot be contained in poems or mere telling of the past. She yearns for something more, something new, just as long as it is something. It can be anywhere, just so there is peace and understanding, a way to fly towards the melding of self with love. If we could just lose ourselves totally, which we have already done greatly when a loved one dies, but long to do completely, we might just survive the loss and make sense of life's grandeur. It is difficult in our cultural context to come up with words that hold death, life, love, awe, wonder, loss, beauty, the ache of separation, and the ecstasy of interconnection. So why not God I say?

What is your Way? How do you get there?

After Her Death

I am trying to find the lesson for tomorrow.
Matthew something. Which lectionary?
I have not forgotten the Way, but a little,
the way to the Way.
the trees keep whispering peace, peace,
and the birds in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are content.
They open their wings so easily, and fly.
So. It is still possible.

I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.

keywords: death, religion, peace, birds, fish, hunt, wings, fly, book, difficult, beautiful

Mary has lost her partner of many years I have learned. So, we have our first poem of this difficult time for her. She turns to birds and trees and her beloved pond, and something more. Always something more. For surely, such love, and such pain cannot be contained in poems or mere telling of the past. She yearns for something more, something new, just as long as it is something. It can be anywhere, just so there is peace and understanding, a way to fly towards the melding of self with love. If we could just lose ourselves totally, which we have already done greatly when a loved one dies, but long to do completely, we might just survive the loss and make sense of life's grandeur. It is difficult in our cultural context to come up with words that hold death, life, love, awe, wonder, loss, beauty, the ache of separation, and the ecstasy of interconnection. So why not God I say?

What is your Way? How do you get there?

Swimming with Otter

I am watching otter, how he

Plays in the water, how he

Displays brae underside to the

Wave-washings, how he

Breathes in descent trailing sudden

Strings of pears that tell

Almost, but never quite, where he is

Apt to rise-how he is

Gone, gone, so long I despair of him, then he

Trims, wetly, up the far shore and if he

Looks back he is surely

Laughing. I too have taken

Myself into this

Summer lake, where the leaves of the trees

Almost touch, where peace comes

In the generosity of water, and I have

Reached out into the loveliness and I have

Floated on my flat back to think out

A poem or two, not by any means fluid but,

Dear God, as you have made me, my only quickness.

Have I spoken of the Ichetucknee River here? If I repeat myself, then I do so, for I suspect that swimming in water is my only quickness. Or perhaps that is where my quickness, my talent, my gifts, my reason for living floats up out of my subconscious with any clarity. So I am drawn to speak of this river so that on land I may know that healing flow.

Every summer I go to the Ichetucknee. I pray that its waters will be clear of pollutant fed algae so that I may see beauty not just above the water, but below where fish flash, invertebrates sparkle, and river grass undulates like caressing healing hands as I swim over the top of this field of green. Such clarity has not been the river’s gift for the last couple of years, so murky have human desires changed this river. But in early September, I took a swim along the entire length – a 2 hour swim that when finished I knew what I was about.

In the middle of the swim we came upon a family of otters. Meredith, my spouse, held up behind me, in love. He’d never seen river otters before and here he was with his nose at their level, and only a few yards away. Well, I don’t know if he was in love, I never asked. But I was. How can one not be when I see otters snacking away on mussels, a husband grinning, and a river of wonder flowing in me, around me, through me, and between me and others, and otters.

What is your quickness?

Walking Home from Oak-Head

There is something
about the snow-laden sky
in winter
in the late afternoon

that brings to the heart elation
and the lovely meaninglessness
of time.
Whenever I get home - whenever -

somebody loves me there.
Meanwhile
I stand in the same dark peace
as any pine tree,

or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,

for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.

Wherever else I live -
in music, in words,
in the fires of the heart,
I abide just as deeply

in this nameless, indivisible place,
this world,
which is falling apart now,
which is white and wild,

which is faithful beyond all our expressions of faith,
our deepest prayers.
Don't worry, sooner or later I'll be home.
Red-cheeked from the roused wind,

I'll stand in the doorway
stamping my boots and slapping my hands,
my shoulders
covered with stars.

keywords: snow, sky, winter, time love, dark, peace, tree, wind, gift, music, word, fire, heart, world, star

I have been told that in this book we see a shift of Mary, perhaps towards religion or God. I'm not quite clear what discontent exactly some of my acquaintances portend when they say "Mary changes" in her later books. It's hard for me to imagine that she could be much more religious, much more of the suffering seeker, or more the one totally committed to growing her faith in the world than she has been. I certainly know that she brings out the hunger in me for faith in earth and her beings. Just beyond her words and often beyond my reach is the nameless, the indivisible, to which she temporarily gives the names of tree or bird. Maybe later she'll take the risk and call this God. It's all the same to me, for my struggle will not change. With this world falling apart now, how might I still see the light and grow a faith that is ultimately beyond me. For me, part of this answer is becoming, read a poem from Mary.

You who read Mary regularly, what is happening with your faith and in your prayers?

Introduction to Thirst and Messenger

Abba Lot went to Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do? Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."

Messenger

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 not 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 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.

Did Mary mean to segue between books ending one with igniting and the other beginning with flame? How did she know that my blog from the day before would speak of being astonished into stillness? Mary, she's in my head and heart. She predicts my life. I have found a faithful companion that speaks of my life's true work - to love, and to speak love. Of course, if it is that basic, how could she not be with me always, as well as the clam and the wren? One quiet, one chattering, both me. All beloved.

What is your life's work?

Wild, Wild

This is what love is:

The dry rose bush the gardener, in his pruning, missed

Suddenly bursts into bloom.

A madness of delight; an obsession.

A holy gift, certainly,

But often, alas, improbable.

Why couldn’t Romeo have settled for someone else?

Why couldn’t Tristan and Isolde have refused

The shining cup

Which would have left peaceful the whole kingdom?

Wild sings the bird of the heart in the forests

Of our lives.

Over and over Faust, standing in the garden, doesn’t know

Anything that’s going to happen, he only sees

The face of Marguerite, which is irresistible.

And wild, wild sings the bird.

Compulsive, wild love can destroy kingdoms and lead us into our doom? It’s hard to see how an out of season blooming bush can bring mayhem and death and suffering, such as the stories to which Mary refers. But now I’m thinking of a bird in a rose bush, a purple finch mistaking this plant for one where she can feed. What is it like to be her, hungry, desperate to feed the chicks back home. She’s distracted though for a moment by the pretty flowers , which cause the bird to sing and forget for a moment the responsibility of chicks, her mate, and the flock. Then an un pair bonded male hears the song and comes to her, where their tryst leads to a flurry of feathers that some might call betrayal, others love, and even others, might say, well, it’s just evolutionary good sense to keep several possible mates in waiting in case catastrophe comes to nest and original mate. Or to help raise the chicks. Or to fertilize the eggs with diverse genes.

Love, out of control, doth seem a chaotic virtue. So powerful, so unplanned, so rift with possibility to bring life, connection, and social bonds that can feed the heart. I wonder then if there is any way to rein love in so that nests and nations may also be adequately nourished while love wreaks havoc. I believe our hearts can hold much love, and that with training and intention we can channel that love into a feeding of the world. But it’s a tricky thing to live so wildly; to let say that fragrant flower outside my window keep me from my chores, my focus of the day, and the writing of this blog. Now where was I….ah yes, in love.

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..

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.

Yesterday Mary spoke of her 40 years of listening and how a few words of prose and poetry come to her as gifts. Yet the words seem to stand in the way of her total melding with life. She listens and flows with all that is, and then when she writes, she becomes human, separate. In the very act of sharing her heart's entwinement with animals, plants, and the earth, she must unravel what it means to be human, and become alone. Is her experience so different than my experience in writing this morning? In you reading these words? What are we doing not out in the beautiful wet morning?

I am just back from the wet morning - a thunderstorms evidence sparkling about and my shirt soaked through with summer's humidity. Along my path I encountered a still living armadillo on the side of the road. She suffered a crushing blow, but was still somewhat conscious. I must write, I must share, I must witness, this next typed letter no more precious than the ants swarming around her. I use words to feed my human colony to know of my heart ache over her suffering, and of my appreciation that Alachua County Animal Services will send someone out to help her. Words serve us, though the calling to serve means we step back and let our heart and mind focus on tasks and know the pain of separation from the beloved earth.

How do words serve you? How do you use words to serve?