A morning reflection.

On Mary Oliver and, "Morning Poem".

The cats are in the window listening to the birds outside. Ears fluttering. Tails busy. They bicker it seems, or is it a warning? Is a predator nearby?

Either way, the drama floats into my home this morning and finds me recharging; full of life, full of hope. A silver lining rises with the sun. I am growing still.

When I forget how to be happy or feel a desolate kind of sorrow brewing in my soul, it is time to write; it is time to read - to remind myself of the beauty of the world that is codified in the permanent record of the poetry and novels of humankind.

Mary Oliver speaks to me when I feel a transition on the horizon. Her work contains multitudes, much of it grounded in nature and a wonder of the natural world.

What better time to revisit, “Morning Poem” than at a moment like this?:

Early morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped ashes
of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
of which are painted islands

of summer lillies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead —
if its all you can do
to keep on trudging —

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted —

each pond with its blazing lillies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

Those last lines are a promise: “whether or not….” I feel it, or think myself worthy, or have “dared to be happy” or “dared to pray”, I am wildly fortunate. If only I take the time to look around, become present in my surroundings, and reflect , I will see it.

My imagination can “alight everywhere” regardless if I am overwhelmed by life’s responsibilities or uncertainty or whether or not I feel inspired or capable - it is always in my possession; creativity. Poetry. Prose. My mind is my own.

There is still inside of me a “beast shouting that the earth is always what it wanted”, and I sense that I am exactly where I was always supposed to be.

From a hike in Central, PA: October 2023.

As pragmatically as I try to see the world, I am prone to mystical thought and have wondered if proximity to certain events of individuals whether we have direct contact with them or not, creates a connections between geography and our destiny: I was born in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania at the same time Mary Oliver was “Poet in Residence” at Bucknell University in the late-1980s. Perhaps, even decades before I would ever come to appreciate poetry or the Classics, there was a providence at play.

Perhaps, and more likely, it is a mere coincidence. Either way, I am grateful to have found the wonder of the written word and have come to appreciate the depth it adds to life.

I hear her words whispering through the birdsong drifting in my window, and I am reasurred, I am calm, I am grounded. I am challenged to keep growing and learning and thinking when she says,

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

With your one wild and precious life?