ShortDays of Celeste

[ismo]

Mary Oliver died, as I suppose everyone but me has already noted. It would have felt like a big loss any time, but I will miss her powerful spirit and heart especially now. She brought so much beauty to light for us. My sister and I discovered her simultaneously and brought my mother a book of her poems. Tron and the Diva also loved her poems. One that my mother especially liked was "Sleeping in the Forest."

I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

- Mary Oliver

My mother once said that she'd like to tuck a copy of that poem into her apron pocket and be buried with it. Tron and I were texting each other about the sadness of the poet leaving us. We agreed that we'd both go out for a walk tomorrow, in memoriam.

I got some things done today: put away laundry, unloaded the dishwasher, washed some pans, made three loaves of bread, took the chicken off the bones and made chicken broth, wrote some email. Sat down with my notebook and was once again stupefied by how inarticulate I become when faced with the page. When I stop all the distractions and sit down to listen, a vast sadness sweeps over me. It is a pure inarticulate note of pain, like a long, pure, resounding note that pierces your ears and your heart and makes you stand suspended, listening, listening, until it dies away. There is no explanation or conclusion. it's just there. The pain of things that vanish. The pain of not knowing. The pain of no possible explanation. This is the sadness that goes right through you like the wind on a cold winter day, and it will take you down. Ah well, one excuse is as good as another, I suppose. Perhaps having named it will help me get past it.

I was going to stop there, but having posted a poem about death that my mother liked, I rebelliously felt like posting one that was more like me. I don't think I want to be buried in a apron, with or without poem in pocket. My mother's view of death is kind of cosy. I prefer to think of it as something striking and transcendent--going out in a blaze of glory.

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.