West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

owl dark bird bird of gloom messenger reminder of death that can’t be stopped

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another—why don’t you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money, I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

How can I hope to be friends with the hard white stars whose flaring and hissing are not speech but a pure radiance? How can I hope to be friends with the yawning spaces between them where nothing, ever, is spoken?

There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than a compression, or elaboration—an exactitude, declared emphasis, emotion-in-syntax—not at all essential to the message.

When I’m dying, and near paradise, maybe the little boat will come like a cloud— like a wing— like a white light burning. This morning, in the actual fog beside the rocking sea, there was nothing— not a sail, not a soul. There was only this— an idea. Beauty can die all right— but don’t you worry, from utter darkness— since opposites are, finally, the same— comes light’s snowy field. And, as for eternity, what’s that but the collation of all the hours we have known of sweetness and urgency? The boat bounced and sparkled, then it trembled, then it shook, then it lay down on the waves. I believe in death. I believe it is the last wonderful work. So they spilled from the boat, they plunged toward darkness, they drowned. You know the story. How the sky flares and grows brighter, all the time! How time extends!

nobody can prove it but any fool can feel it

Here is the white and silky trumpet of nothing. Here is the beautiful Nothing, body of happy, meaningless fire, wildfire, shaking the heart.

If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me? Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not together.

When you hear, a mile away and still out of sight, the churn of the water as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the sharp rocks—when you hear that unmistakable pounding—when you feel the mist on your mouth and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls plunging and steaming—then row, row for your life toward it.

But how did you come burning down like a wild needle, knowing just where my heart was?

And what did you think love would be like? A summer day? The brambles in their places, and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and their pastel shoulders?

Did we sleep long? Is it this life still, or is it the next life, already? Are we gone, then? Are we there? How will we ever know?

I am thinking of you. I am always thinking of you.

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy, to let you in! Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass! Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

Well, there is time left— fields everywhere invite you into them. And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? While the soul, after all, is only a window, and the opening of the window no more difficult than the wakening from a little sleep.