Heading Home Again
I cannot write as Mary Oliver has written
About snow geese and the song of dawn
Over a living pond far away,
Because she’s far away from me
Now more than ever, more than forever
She commanded nature by
Never giving orders
She sensed through more than senses
All she met and came to understand
I think we can rely on her, through
Words and more she left us
I wish like wishing on a star
That I could have sat with her just once
Maybe we would not have been good company
My inclination would have been
To do little more than listen
And maybe she would not have left it that way
But like nature as she cast it
Only settled for full participation
In my place under town lights
I cannot see the stars
But on the inside I can travel like Thoreau
And other theories
And read her words to let them sink
Like stones returning home from the rim they
Had been cast upon, long ago
We can all love the world better
Through our pastored mischief-making
There is need for redemption
But we need to look more closely, all the while
To remember all the places where love sits
Or rises now and then to play
All the people who will take us home
Or simply push on gliders made by wind
As we arrive
C L Couch
Oliver lived in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Hobe Sound, Florida, until her death in early 2019 [which is now]. She was 83.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver
Wild Geese
https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/wild-geese
(image)
John Fowler [destined, if not predetestined] from Placitas, NM, USA – Snow Geese, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24663639
Incoming snow geese fill the dawn sky at Bosque del Apache.
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