West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems

by Mary Oliver

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.

What will ambition do for me that the fox, appearing suddenly at the top of the field, her eyes sharp and confident as she stared into mine, has not already done?

Above the child who will recover and the child who will not recover, the same energies roll forward, from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

in the long blades of the grass but now look death too is a carpenter how all his helpers the shining ants labor the tiny knives of their mouths dipping and slashing how they hurry in and out of that looped body taking apart opening up now the soul flashes like a star and is gone there is only that soft dark building death.

Then the wind fluttered its wrists, a sweet music as usual, though as usual I could not tell whether it was about caring or not caring that it tossed itself around, in the boughs of light, and sang.

I think there is no other prize, only rapture the gleaming, rapture the illogical the weightless— whether it be for the perfect shapeliness of something you love— like an old German song— or of someone— or the dark floss of the earth itself, heavy and electric. At the edge of sweet sanity open such wild, blind wings.

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if god wasn’t just an idea but shoulders and a spine, gathered from everywhere, even the most distant planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough words come to me now, quick as thistles. Who made your tyrant’s body, your thirst, your delving, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker, oh tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.

Through the open window we can hear the mockingbird, still young, still lucky, wild beak kissing and chuckling as it flutters and struts along the avenue of song.