West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

all eternity is in the moment this is what Blake said Whitman said

Black Oaks Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance and comfort. Not one can manage a single sound, though the blue jays carp and whistle all day in the branches, without the push of the wind. But to tell the truth after a while I’m pale with longing for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen and you can’t keep me from the woods, from the tonnage of their shoulders, and their shining green hair. Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. 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.

And have you made inquiry yet as to what the poetry of this world is about? For what purpose do we seek it, and ponder it, and give it such value?

For this is my skill—I am capable of pondering the most detailed knowledge, and the most fastened-up, impenetrable mystery, at the same time.

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. And therefore, as an elegance, as something almost superfluous, it is likely (because it is free to be so used) to be carefully shaped, to take risks, to begin and even prolong adventures that may turn out poorly after all—and all in the cause of the crisp flight and the buzzing bliss of the words, as well as their directive—to make, of the body-bright commitment to life, and its passions, including (of course!) the passion of meditation, an exact celebration, or inquiry, employing grammar, mirth, and wit in a precise and intelligent way. Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

And, as for eternity, what’s that but the collation of all the hours we have known of sweetness and urgency?

If you think daylight is just daylight then it is just daylight.

You are young. So you know everything. You leap into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me. Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me. Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a dead dog nine days unburied. 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.

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives— tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer, feel like? Do you think this world is only an entertainment for 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! No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint that something is missing from your life! Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch? Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually? Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone? 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? Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk! To put one’s foot into the door of the grass, which is the mystery, which is death as well as life, and not be afraid! To set one’s foot in the door of death, and be overcome with amazement! To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw, nodding this way and that way, ...