The Swan

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air~
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music~like the rain pelting the trees~like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds~
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

By Mary Oliver

After Arguing Against The Contention That Art Must Come From Discontent
A poem by Mary Oliver

Whispering to each handhold, “I’ll be back,”
I go up the cliff in the dark. One place
I loosen a rock and listen a long time
till it hits, faint in the gulf, but the rush
of the torrent almost drowns it out, and the wind~
I almost forgot the wind: it tears at your side
or it waits and then buffets; you sag outward…

I remember they said it would be hard. I scramble
by luck into a little pocket out of
the wind and begin to beat on the stones
with my scratched numb hands, rocking back and forth
in silent laughter there in the dark–
“Made it again!” Oh how I love this climb!
~the whispering to the stones, the drag, the weight
as your muscles crack and ease on, working
right. They are back there, discontent,
waiting to be driven forth. I pound
on the earth, riding the earth past the stars:
“Made it again! Made it again!”

A Meeting

She steps into the dark swamp
where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package
drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it
between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature
like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together
like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a field
thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.
I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman
I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,
the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want
to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly
wild.

~ By Mary Oliver

Crow 2015 by Drea
http://dreajensengallery.artistwebsites.com/featured/crow-2015-drea-jensen.html%5B/caption%5D

Crow
By Drea

Crow composure,
a raven caw, caw, caw,
harshly insistent, demand.

Bodily creativity spill,
diffuse energy
like sunlight.

Mutely muffle sound,
steady heartbeat,
our shaky hand.

GOOD MORNING

1.

“Hello, wren” is the first thing I say.
“Where did you come from appearing so
sudden and cheerful in the privet? Which,
by the way, has decided to decorate itself
in so many white blossoms.”

2.

Paulus is coming to visit! Paulus the
dancer, the potter. Who is just beginning
his eightieth decade, who walks without
shoes in the woods because his feet, he
says, ask to be in touch with the earth.
Paulus who when he says my poems sometimes
changes them a little, according to the
occasion or his own feelings. Okay, I say.

3.

Stay young, always, in the theater of your
mind.

4.

Bless the notebook that I always carry in
my pocket.
And the pen.
Bless the words with which I try to say
what I see, think, or feel.
With gratitude for the grace of the earth.
The expected and the exception, both.
For all the hours I have been given to
be in this world.

5.

The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird,
the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the
otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And
on and on. It must be a great disappointment
to God if we are not dazzled at least ten
times a day.

6.

Slowly the morning climbs toward the day.
As for the poem, not this poem but any
poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel
its hope, its entance to a community? Do
you feel its hand in your hand?

7.

But perhaps you’re still sleeping. I
could wake you with a touch or a kiss.
But so could I shake the petals from
the wild rose which blossoms so silently
and perfectly, and I do not.

~ by Mary Oliver