Be yourself. How many times have we been admonished---by movies, books, and talk shows---to obey that ridiculous order?
I like Mary Oliver's suggestion better: Be other. Grow leaves from your fingertips.
Reckless Poem
by Mary Oliver
Today again I am hardly myself.
It happens over and over.
It is heaven-sent.
It flows through me
like the blue wave.
Green leaves – you may believe this or not –
have once or twice
emerged from the tips of my fingers
somewhere
deep in the woods,
in the reckless seizure of spring.
Though, of course, I also know that other song,
the rest is here
Poetry Friday is hosted today by the always fabulous Jama Rattigan at alphabet soup
Mmm. Like this. It's a freeing sort of poem, freeing like giving up the phrase "write what you know."
ReplyDeleteMary Oliver puts words to the humming in my soul.
ReplyDeleteI like this one, too:
The Journey
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Ooh. Thanks for this. This poem really spoke to me today, since I've been on retreat in New Hampshire this week, which has involved daily hikes through the woods. I know those green-leaved fingertips well.
ReplyDeleteBut it was this line that stopped me short:
And I thought: if she lives her life with all her strength
is she not wonderful and wise?
I am going to ponder that for the next few minutes here. And then again later.
Beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThis is new to me. I love it. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteSara,
ReplyDeleteI love "the sweet passion of one-ness," humans are part of the larger nature of rocks, trees, and animals.
Once heard a talk about rocks. Rocks view humans as living in fast forward mode. When a rock is thousands of years old, then a human's mere 80-100 years, seems to move by quickly.
Perhaps, "the other" is just a part of us we haven't discovered or acknowledged.
Laura Evans
all things poetry
Mary Oliver never fails to make me think and feel in new ways.
ReplyDelete