Friday, March 6, 2009

speak easy, mary oliver

Moving is changing is ever before me, and New York is filling my mind with cement. Waiting is wondering and I can't help wondering what it would do to me to live there, assuming the school I'm waiting on even took a second glance at me. Looking on faces of countless, anonymous, broken, strangers, day after day after day, where would my thoughts find rest between signs and windowpanes? How much breath can anyone gain in that vast yet unwild park, looking down kempt paves of grey? In splitting doubts from fears tonight and filtering past memories of decision hastes, my ears are bent to Mary Oliver, a poet from New England whe knows a thing or two about grieving, about writing...and predictably, predictably, I have wound up in some trees.


When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, "Stay awhile."
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, "It's simple," they say,
"and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

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