Take a Break from Stressing

                                                                         

This pretty critter landed on my laptop while I was doom-scrolling. It seemed like a message.

I took it outside and we communed for a while. 

Then I moved it to a plant and went in and read Mary Oliver's lovely poem The Summer Day-- a nice change from the news and appropriate at all times. You can find it here. 

And remember to breathe.

From Dogfish

                                                                

Sometimes M.O. is so right on I can hardly stand it.

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.

A Challenge

I don't expect anyone to look to me for guidance or wisdom but recently I've been thinking about a precept I believe is worth attempting.

 Be Kind. 

It doesn't always come easy to me; I can be sarcastic and snarky (anything for a laugh) and come across as unfeeling. But I'm going to try to remember first of all to

Be Kind. *

 

 “Dogfish” by Mary Oliver (an excerpt)

 . . .

You don’t want to hear the story

of my life, and anyway

I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it’s the same old story – – –

a few people just trying,

one way or another,

to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.

And nobody, of course, is kind,

or mean,

for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to

swim through the fires to stay in

this world.

 Okay, perhaps I need to qualify my precept. I don't intend to be kind to the Loser-in-Chief or any of his enablers.  The kindest  thing I can say about him is that I suspect he was damaged by his upbringing. I  mean kindness in personal interactions--whether real or virtual. (And what is real, anyway?)

(An

Now, More Than Ever

"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild, precious life?"

link to Mary Oliver's poem HERE

First Snow - Mary Oliver

The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere

calling us back to why, how, 
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing 
past windows, an energy it seemed

would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.

The silence 
is immense
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles

of ribbons, the broad fields
 smolder with light, a passing
 creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills


and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain--not a single
answer has been found--


walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields
feels like one.

~Mary Oliver~

For Someone Out There?

Last Sunday I posted a Mary Oliver poem about death. I'm not sure why I chose it--probably something about the bleakness of the season. But then a lovely thing happened.  A few days later I was out doing errands and as I was getting in my car, a neighbor came hurrying across the parking lot. I'd seen on Facebook that her invalid mother had died quite recently and I began to say the things one says. Then my neighbor told me that the poem about death had come at the perfect time -- her mother had died that same day and, the neighbor said, "It felt like you were talking right to me."

Dang! I loved that. Though it briefly made me feel a little like one of those televangelists who close their eyes and are aware of someone in Duluth who is suffering from cancer and then rebukes and casts out the cancer over the airwaves.

Or maybe not.

But when I chose another Mary Oliver poem to post today, I did wonder if it might speak to someone in particular--especially now as we enter the holiday season which mandates joy and is, therefore, so tricky for many, whether from personal griefs or from generalized despair at the sad state of the world today.

Of course, that's the function of good poetry: to speak to us in particular.

"Don't Hesitate" by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
Don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often 
kind. And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes 
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that's often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

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 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 at 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.

Song of Autumn by Mary Oliver

In the deep fall

don't you imagine the leaves think how

comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the 

nothingness of air and the endless

freshets of wind? And don't you think

the trees themselves, especially those with mossy

warm caves, begin to think

of the birds that will come--six, a dozen--to sleep

inside their bodies? And don't you hear

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first

tuffets of snow? The pond

vanishes, and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its

bellows. And at evening especially, 

the piled firewood shifts a little

longing to be on its way.

Mary Oliver -- Rest in Peace

She has left us so much . . .

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.

The Poet Dreams of the Mountain by Mary Oliver

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. 

Mary Oliver, from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems, Beacon Press.

Gratitude by Mary Oliver

What did you notice?

The dew-snail;
the low-flying sparrow;
the bat, on the wind, in the dark;
big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance;
the soft toad, patient in the hot sand;
the sweet-hungry ants;
the uproar of mice in the empty house;
the tin music of the cricket’s body;
the blouse of the goldenrod.

What did you hear?

The thrush greeting the morning;
the little bluebirds in their hot box;
the salty talk of the wren,
then the deep cup of the hour of silence.

When did you admire?

The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit;
the carrot, rising in its elongated waist;
the onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale green wand;
at the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers;
then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost.

What astonished you?

The swallows making their dip and turn over the water.

What would you like to see again?

My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness,
her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue,
her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness,
her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap.

What was most tender?

Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root;
the everlasting in its bonnets of wool;
the kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body;
the tall, blank banks of sand;
the clam, clamped down.

What was most wonderful?

The sea, and its wide shoulders;
the sea and its triangles;
the sea lying back on its long athlete’s spine.

What did you think was happening?

The green beast of the hummingbird;
the eye of the pond;
the wet face of the lily;
the bright, puckered knee of the broken oak;
the red tulip of the fox’s mouth;
the up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow—

so the gods shake us from our sleep.