Still More From Oliver's Red Bird

After concluding that I had mined Mary Oliver's Red Bird* for all the meaning it had for me, I have come back again and again and found more. Here are three more poems that speak to me now.


Desire

So long as I am hanging on

I want to be young and noble.

I want to be bold.

So said the great buck, named Swirler,

as he stepped like a king past me

the week before he was arrow-killed.

And so said the wren in the bush

after another hard year

of love, of nest-life, of singing.

And so say I

every morning, just before sunrise,

wading the edge of the dark ocean.


One Day in August

It is time now, I said,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit

among the flux of happenings.

Something had pestered me so much

I thought my heart would break.

I mean the mechanical part.

I went down in the afternoon

to the sea

which held me, until I grew easy.

About tomorrow, who knows anything.

Except that it will be time, again,

for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.


So Every Day

So every day

I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth

of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.


* Red Bird, Poems by Mary Oliver (2008)