The Journey – 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.

The Journey

I am saddened by today’s news of the death of the inestimable Mary Oliver and am moved to honour her in my own way.

The first poem I learned by heart and one of the first of hers I encountered twenty-some years ago was The Journey. It spoke so powerfully to me of the way we each find our own way in the world. It gave me courage and encouragement to do the only thing you could do. I spoke it often and her voice became my own.

Over the years, I immersed myself in her poetry, always finding new ones to delight and surprise and challenge me. She used direct, accessible language, a hallmark for me of poems I love, and hers were a subtle and often not-so-subtle influence in my own writing. Her observations on the natural world were a doorway, as an urbanite, to a place I often longed to go; her words took me there. As she herself said, she “made a world out of words”.

When her death made the national and international news, my husband remarked how astonishing that someone who was not a rock star, nor a sports celebrity, should be so noticed and celebrated. And I replied, that’s because she is a poet who spoke for and to us all and will continue to do so. She did not end up simply having visited this world.

I am ever grateful for the legacy this gentle soul has left any who choose to read her work. What she created mattered and will live on. I bow in gratitude and appreciation.

Questions Before Dark – Jeanne Lohmann

Day ends, and before sleep
when the sky dies down, consider
your altered state: has this day
changed you? Are the corners
sharper or rounded off? Did you
live with death? Make decisions
that quieted? Find one clear word
that fit? At the sun’s midpoint
did you notice a pitch of absence,
bewilderment that invites
the possible? What did you learn
from things you dropped and picked up
and dropped again? Did you set a straw
parallel to the river, let the flow
carry you downstream?

Questions Before Dark

I do appreciate poems that ask questions, especially ones that cannot be answered simply  but remain in my mind to challenge me, to inform my days, and especially now at the beginning of a new year. I hope you may find a question or two here that is meaningful to you, learning, as Rilke says, ‘to love the questions‘.

Has this day changed you? She asks us to consider this at day’s end and of course how could we not be altered, though it may not always seem so.

I love this one: Are the corners sharper or rounded off? When I am at peace with myself, I can feel the roundedness; sharper when I am feeling anxious.

Did you live with death? I do try to remember every day that I’m going to die; that death is certain though the time of death uncertain.

Make decisions that quieted? Sometimes yes, again those rounded off corners in my mind, unremarkable decisions in the course of an ordinary day that settle me.

Find one clear word that fit? Well, words are important to me so I give them a lot of thought and although I may not always find ones that fit, it gives me pleasure to search for them.

A pitch of absence, bewilderment that invites the possible? Ah yes, the uncertainty I often struggle with even though it holds possibilities unforeseen.

What did you learn from things you dropped and picked up and dropped again? I’m thinking here of things I learn, then forget, then relearn, sometimes repeating this many times until it becomes a new knowledge.

Did you set a straw parallel to the river, let the flow carry you downstream? This is meaningful to me as I hold the intention at the start of this year to let my days unfurl rather than rushing through them. I’m reminded of John O’Donohue’s succinctly eloquent poem: I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding. Yup, like that.