A great poet and observer of the natural world has died. As she said of herself:
“There’s Oliver, still standing around in the weeds. There she is, still scribbling in her notebook… but at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel.”
Little Owl Who Lives in the Orchard
by Mary Oliver
His beak could open a bottle,
and his eyes – when he lifts their soft lids –
go on reading something
just beyond your shoulder –
Blake, maybe,
or the Book of Revelation.
Never mind that he eats only
the black-smocked crickets,
and the dragonflies if they happen
to be out late over the ponds, and of course
the occasional festal mouse.
Never mind that he is only a memo
from the offices of fear –
it’s not size but surge that tells us
when we’re in touch with something real,
and when I hear him in the orchard
fluttering
down the little aliminum
ladder of his scream –
when I see his wings open, like two black ferns,
a flurry of palpitations
as cold as sleet
rackets across the marshlands
of my heart
like a wild spring day.
Somewhere in the universe,
in the gallery of important things,
the babyish owl, ruffled and rakish,
sits on its pedestal.
Dear, dark dapple of plush!
A message, reads the label,
from that mysterious conglomerate:
Oblivion and Co.
The hooked head stares
from its house of dark, feathery lace.
It could be a valentine.
Our beloved poet. I’m so happy I went to see/hear her in person a few years ago. The tickets were expensive and venue several hundred miles away, but all worth it. A highlight of my life. I’ll miss her new work we won’t have, but treasure her old. 💔
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Money well spent indeed. I love her understanding of the sheer intensity of beauty.
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Sad news. Lovely poem. xx
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I think she lived a rich life!
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Thank God she wrote so much – all there to be revisited.
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I agree. She is worth visiting and revisiting!
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