is where
in the pinewoods
in the moments between
the darkness
and first light
two deer
came walking down the hill
and when they saw me
they said to each other, okay
this one is okay,
let's see who she is
and why she is sitting
on the ground, like that,
so quiet, as if
asleep, or in a dream,
but, anyway, harmless;
and so they came
on their slender legs
and gazed upon me
not unlike the way
I go out to the dunes and look
and look and look
into the faces of the flowers;
and then one of them leaned forward
and nuzzled my hand, and what can my life
bring to me that could exceed
that brief moment?
For twenty years
I have gone every day to the same woods,
not waiting, exactly, just lingering.
Such gifts, bestowed,
can't be repeated.
If you want to talk about this
come to visit. I live in the house
near the corner, which I have named Gratitude.
Mary Oliver
3 comments:
Are you a fan of Mary Karr, Jodi? You seem to really like poetry. I have just recently been introduced to her, and I am enjoying her stuff thoroughly.
I haven't read anything by Mary Karr (at least that I recall.) Can you recommend something? I'll check it out.
Here are a couple that I like.
"Who the Meek Are Not"
Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice paddy muck, nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don't get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek (she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who — at his master's voice — seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears prick forward, awaiting the next order.
"A Blessing from My Sixteen Years' Son"
I have this son who assembled inside me
during Hurricane Gloria. In a flash, he appeared,
in a tiny blaze. Outside, pines toppled.
Phone lines snapped and hissed like cobras.
Inside, he was a raw pearl: microscopic, luminous.
Look at the muscled obelisk of him now
pawing through the icebox for more grapes.
Sixteen years and not a bone broken,
nor single stitch. By his age,
I was marked more ways, and small.
He’s a slouching six-foot, three,
with implausible blue eyes, which settle
on the pages of Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”
with profound belligerence.
A girl with a navel ring
could make his cell phone go buzz,
or an Afro-ed boy leaning on a mop at Taco Bell--
creatures strange to me as dragons or eels.
Balanced on a kitchen stool, each gives counsel
arcane as any oracle’s. Rodney claims school
is harshing my mellow. Case longs to date
a tattooed girl, because he wants a woman
willing to do stuff she’ll regret.
They’ve come to lead my son
into his broadening spiral.
Someday soon, the tether
will snap. I birthed my own mom
into oblivion. The night my son smashed
the car fender then rode home
in the rain-streaked cop car, he asked, Did you
and Dad screw up so much?
He’d let me tuck him in,
my grandmother’s wedding quilt
from 1912 drawn to his goateed chin. Don’t
blame us, I said. You’re your own
idiot now. At which he grinned.
The cop said the girl in the crimped Chevy
took it hard. He’d found my son
awkwardly holding her in the canted headlights,
where he’d draped his own coat
over her shaking shoulders. My fault,
he’d confessed right off.
Nice kid, said the cop.
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