Books by the old Leather Chair

  • Snow In The Summer
  • My Bible
  • The Power of Silence
  • What Comes Next and to Like It
  • Encore Provence
  • A Year in Provence

Friday, April 22, 2011

Is This Me

A poem I just received
from a special online friend
As I read
I had the thought
Is this "me"


Reckless Poem
Mary Oliver

Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.

It flows through me
like the blue wave.
Green leaves – you may believe this or not –
have once or twice
emerged from the tips of my fingers

somewhere
deep in the woods,
in the reckless seizure of spring.

Though, of course, I also know that other song,
the sweet passion of one-ness.

Just yesterday I watched an ant crossing a path, through the
tumbled pine needles she toiled.
And I thought: she will never live another life but this one.
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
And I continued this up the miraculous pyramid of everything
until I came to myself.

And still, even in these northern woods, on these hills of sand,
I have flown from the other window of myself
to become white heron, blue whale,
red fox, hedgehog.
Oh, sometimes already my body has felt like the body of a flower!
Sometimes already my heart is a red parrot, perched
among strange, dark trees, flapping and screaming.

6 comments:

Tabor said...

I think I have to make this more of me...and worry less about all the things I keep thinking I have to do!

One Woman's Journey - a journal being written from Woodhaven - her cottage in the woods. said...

Tabor - I agree...

Beverly said...

It is you if you think it is....

One Woman's Journey - a journal being written from Woodhaven - her cottage in the woods. said...

Beverly, :)

Sharon said...

It tickles me that my online friends like Mary Oliver as much as I do. Her poetry touches the deepest parts of me ~

Folkways Note Book said...

Mary Oliver is one with the earth in this poem. As always. I felt I was looking into a "word mirror" when I was reading it. I read your comment on Time Goes By today. Your life story is similar to mine. -- barbara