Mary Oliver …again

Build a shrine to this woman, (Mary Oliver ) her way with words and soul and emotion is just amazing, her ability to understand and comminicate images from nature that echo ancient symbols and visions of the internal workings of the heart and soul is incredible. This poem really spoke to my condition, does it do it for you?

Dogfish
Mary Oliver

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
and looking around.
Black as a fisherman’s boot,
with a white belly.

If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
which was rough
as a thousand sharpened nails.

And you know
what a smile means,
don’t you?

*

I wanted the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,

whoever I was, I was

alive
for a little while.

*

It was evening, and no longer summer.
Three small fish, I don’t know what they were,
huddled in the highest ripples
as it came swimming in again, effortless, the whole body
one gesture, one black sleeve
that could fit easily around
the bodies of three small fish.

*

Also I wanted
to be able to love. And we all know
how that one goes,
don’t we?

Slowly

*

the dogfish tore open the soft basins of water.

*

You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen

to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

And anyway it’s the same old story – - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don’t waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.
—–

Related posts:

Related posts:

1. Music – Mary Oliver
2. The Summer Day – Mary Oliver
3. The Eve of Destruction
4. The best novels of the 20th Century
5. Now I become Myself – May Sarton

• Search

  Log In

  Username
  

  Password
  

  Remember Me

• Facebook Status

  
  
  

  
  Jonathan Spencer : Posted a new post on their blog
  (Fri Jan 13, 12:26 pm).

• The Posts you read

  • Phone Hacking – What part did the phone companies play?
  • Honey, mint and onion – a salad garnish you won’t believe tastes this good
  • UK Riots and Looting, no easy answers
  • Wanted: Self-build plot, demolition or renovation near Lewes, East Sussex
  • 3 Great Places to visit in Southern Tuscany

• The Best Accounting Software

  
  
  

• Look