Alexandersmap

    Tag: Mary Oliver

    • Emergency Room Poetry

      “I don’t know if I will ever write another poem. I don’t know if I am going to live for a long time yet, or even for a while.
      But I am going to spend my life wisely. I’m going to be happy, and frivolous, and useful….
      To rise like a slow and beautiful poem. To live a long time.”
      — Mary Oliver, Fletcher Oak

      Hours waiting quietly in an emergency room, alongside the patient dozing on a bed nearby, her husband dozing in a chair next to me, and a constant stream of activity feet away as the frailty of humans is displayed in one example after another. But not just frailty—resiliency is also on display. So many people fighting for better health and another day. We have only to see the staff in an emergency room in action to know that the best of humanity lingers among us.

      It’s unspoken, but acknowledged. You assess the people around you and the suffering they’re dealing with in this particular moment in our collective history. They do the same with you. What brought us all here? Most often not how we expected this day to go. Yet here we are. Amor fati.

      The waiting rooms in hospitals usually have televisions broadcasting something uncontroversial, like cooking shows. There’s already enough tension in such places without pouring gas on the fire. But inside the locked door where treatment happens (or where you await it) there are no such distractions as cooking shows. It’s here that people learn to listen to themselves again, or glance at others, or most often, text and scroll with the outside world, far from this place.

      I chose Mary Oliver. Poetry in the quiet moments awaiting answers, awaiting treatment for those I support, those who have supported me on my own down days. Here I sat in awe of doctors and nurses doing what is routine for them. Asking questions and texting updates when there were any, feeding crackers to the patient and joking about sneaking gin and tonics in. Whatever it took to make the moment better. To be useful in a challenging moment is all we can ask of ourselves.

    • Proper Work

      “How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly, looking at everything and calling out Yes! No! … Imagination is better than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” — Mary Oliver, Yes! No!

      I saw some pictures of friends off on some beautiful hike over the weekend, and other friends reawakening their sailboat before setting off for adventure. My own activity this weekend was less inspiring. Instead of adventure, I found some new soreness this weekend, earned with a pressure washer and a tall stepladder navigated to high places to make the house shine a little brighter. Sometimes our proper work is doing chores that have been nagging us for awhile, that we may return our focus to the universe yet again.

      The thing is, when I walked the pup later in the afternoon when the sun was shining just so, the house smiled back at me. We become what we put into the world, and a bit of housework does the body and soul good. It may sound silly, but I can look at a sparkling clean house and say “I did that” just as proudly as if I’d hiked up Mount Washington. The memories are different, but every journey set out upon that is completed counts for something.

      Proper work is highly subjective, but in the end it’s the things that we apply focus to that moves us forward. Writing this blog—to me—is proper work. So is tending the garden and washing the dishes and calling the customer you know is angry because it’s the right thing to do to hear them out and help them move to a better place. To be present and engaged in each thing that we do matters a great deal, for it’s the stuff of life and we only have the one go at it.

      What we say yes and no to in our days becomes our identity. When this day is complete, what will it say about us? We ought to slow down just enough to see the path we’re on, that we may know where we’ve been, and perhaps, where we’re going next. And so if you’ll excuse me the blog is now complete for the day, and it seems I have even more work to do.

    • To Do, Beautifully

      “My time here is short; what can I do most beautifully?” — As quoted by James Patterson

      This is stoicism in a nutshell. Acknowledgement that our time is limited (memento mori), with the follow on question; what will I do about it (carpe diem) that will resonate most for me and possibly others? That the most successful author in book sales frequently drops that quote serves both the author and those who will hear the call. It’s akin to old friend Mary Oliver’s challenge at the end of her most cherished poem, The Summer Day:

      Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
      Tell me, what is it you plan to do
      with your one wild and precious life?
      —Mary Oliver

      The question of questions for each of us is what to do with our precious time. The answer is usually to waste it in distractions and deferment. Why set course today when we can keep doing what we’ve always done, assuming a tomorrow? We know the folly of this even as we master the art of procrastination. We must feel the urgency in the question and take the steps that lead to our answer. We aren’t here simply to enjoy the ride, but to love our verse.

      That you are here—that life exists and identity,
      That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
      — Walt Whitman, O Me! O Life!

      So begins another day. We can’t control everything, but we can control this next thing. To step into beautiful, and bring light to the dark. In doing so, we may pass the torch to those who would follow. There is only now to make our mark.

    • Tell About It

      Instructions for living a life:
      Pay attention.
      Be astonished.
      Tell about it.
      — Mary Oliver, Sometimes

      “If you give away everything you have, you are left with nothing. This forces you to look, to be aware, to replenish.” — Paul Arden

      Writing is simply a practice for tracking and amplifying progress in this bold act of becoming what’s next. There are no advertisements or subscription fees or hints to go buy whatever it is I’m selling that day. There’s simply a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of a daily blog for those inclined to follow along to see what this fool is up to now.

      More than that, it serves as a vehicle for sharing my attention and awareness and growth when it would be easier perhaps to just consume my share and leave the words for others. Who really has time to follow yet another blogger in this crazy world anyway? Viewed as a daily ritual leading to self-improvement and a greater awareness of my place in this world gets me closer to why. But it’s more than that, for wouldn’t a journal serve the same purpose? No, there’s something in the act of sharing everything that opens up the mind to receive more.

      To live and then to tell about what we’ve encountered along the way is to expand our lives beyond ourselves—beyond our time and place and circle of trust, and connect with some soul who may never know you but for these words. Like the tide ebbing and then flowing again, we are refreshed, alive and connected with the rest of the universe as soon as we click publish. We owe it to ourselves to have something to say in that moment. That each post may just be our last implores us to do our best with it. Living with urgency brings vibrancy to the otherwise mundane possibility of another today (sort of like yesterday). Fully aware and ready to share what we see with others forces our senses open. To find something new to be astonished about today seems a lovely way to move through a life, don’t you think?

    • Still to Be Ours

      Last night
      the rain
      spoke to me
      slowly, saying,
      what joy
      to come falling
      out of the brisk cloud,
      to be happy again
      in a new way
      on the earth!
      That’s what it said
      as it dropped,
      smelling of iron,
      and vanished
      like a dream of the ocean
      into the branches
      and the grass below.
      Then it was over.
      The sky cleared.
      I was standing
      under a tree.
      The tree was a tree
      with happy leaves,
      and I was myself,
      and there were stars in the sky
      that were also themselves
      at the moment
      at which moment
      my right hand
      was holding my left hand
      which was holding the tree
      which was filled with stars
      and the soft rain –
      imagine! imagine!
      the long and wondrous journeys
      still to be ours.
      — Mary Oliver, Last Night the Rain Spoke to Me

      It seems to rain all the time now. Is that a function of climate change or spring in New England? If winter was a forever mud season, what are we to make of the regularly-scheduled mud season? Control what we can, let go of what we cannot, and celebrate the moments rain or shine; that’s what. The silver lining was that the rain that greeted me this morning inspired me to seek out an old friend.

      It’s been a while since Mary Oliver graced the blog, and honestly, I felt the void. If our quest is greater awareness of the moment we’re in, the whisper of a poet in our ear is as good a place to start as any. But then you read a poem like this one, with a look ahead to what’s still to be ours, and it’s easier to see the way. A great poet looks at who we are becoming as much as who we are. Poetry is life, after all.

      I’m not much for resolutions, but I love a great routine. Each day should include a bit of self-maintenance, a bit of movement, some honest effort applied to work that matters to us, a conversation with someone as deeply invested in us as we are in them, the pursuit of deeper knowledge and experience, and yes, a wee bit of poetry and song to complete the soundtrack. That to me is a successful day, and if we may string together enough of them in a row, one heck of a life.

      If I dwell too often in what’s to come, it’s merely a sense of hope and purpose betraying my intentions. Our present is built from the momentum of the past carrying us to this place, where we linger for a beat to feel the rain on our face before we turn again to what’s next. Our lives are forever lived with an eye on the path ahead, lest we stumble. To imagine what’s possible for ourselves and have the boldness to step towards it. This is the momentum for our tomorrow, greeting us today.

    • Stepping Out of the Box

      Let me ask you this.
      Do you also think that beauty exists for some
      fabulous reason?
      And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure—
      your life—
      what would do for you?
      — Mary Oliver, To Begin With, the Sweet Grass

      Plotting our next adventure in a faraway place, we went out for breakfast to dance with the hopefulness of scheduled enchantment. We ran into a woman we know, who once was married and then she wasn’t, but she never accepted that she wasn’t and retreated into herself and the rituals of the church and suddenly twenty years later she’s still the same shell of a person she was then but older and more insulated from the world. She might have gone with us on our adventure, or perhaps one of her own, had she only gotten out of her own way.

      She made me wonder—what rituals of routine are getting in my own way? If the opposite of boredom is engagement and being captivated by the world around us, why do we settle for something less? What lingers just outside the box of our identity? Why is that so frightening? To live in fear of the world is to never be alive.

      As this is published it’s the first Monday in March. March was once the first month of the original Roman calendar. If you think about it, the calendar is arbitrary and nothing but a shared belief that keeps this whole game going. We can’t very well change the calendar and function in a society that works off of it, but we can use it as a reminder to ourselves that we can change things when we find our routine isn’t working for us any more. It’s like adding two months to a year our ancestors thought they had figured out. It turns out the extra two months made it better. Imagine what we can make better if we changed too?

      A few days ago we had a leap day on that 12-month calendar, tacked on to the end of a month that once didn’t exist in the minds of mankind. It was a bonus day and a chance to do something truly different. Most of us went about our lives as we did the day before or the days since. It was sort of like New Year’s Day in this way, where we might think up all sorts of ways we may break out of the box but end up right back in our ritual of routine. Imagining our possibility is easier than actually living it. We forget that we don’t have to leap, we could simply step out of the box and close the door behind us.

    • More Than Having Visited

      When death comes
      like the hungry bear in autumn;
      when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

      to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
      when death comes
      like the measle-pox;

      when death comes
      like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

      I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
      what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

      And therefore I look upon everything
      as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
      and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
      and I consider eternity as another possibility,

      and I think of each life as a flower, as common
      as a field daisy, and as singular,

      and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
      tending, as all music does, toward silence,

      and each body a lion of courage, and something
      precious to the earth.

      When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
      I was a bride married to amazement.
      I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

      When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
      if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
      I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
      or full of argument.

      I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
      — Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

      I feel sometimes like I’ve read every Mary Oliver poem over and over again, then stumble upon one of those poems as if for the first time. Our experience in life comes down to what we’re paying attention to in the moment. Look one way and we see a shooting star. Look the other way a crouching tiger. Surely there are tigers in this world ready to pounce, but Lord give me the stars.

      The thing is, we all know how the world can be. None of us is living with our head in the sand, pretending everything is going to be okay. Sometimes things aren’t okay at all. Sometimes we’re faced with more than our share. In most cases the universe aligns behind us (for here we are), but we forget to honor the miracle in the noise of being alive.

      We may develop a reverence for living if we’re born in the right place at the right time, with the blessing of more stars than tigers. We may be keenly aware of the injustices in the world without building a fortress of our own against an imagined adversary. To live a full life we must be steadfastly open, that we may be bursting with wonder. Nothing closed up is ever truly filled.

      We are here for more than just a visit, friend. A life is really nothing more than one full day at a time, beginning with the one at hand. Even when some yesterdays leave us a bit disenchanted and empty, our todays are an occasion to gather up as much wonder as we can carry, that we may share our abundance with others. There’s enough magic to go around, should we bring attention to it.

    • The Evening Walk

      “A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
      smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
      that you know
      almost nothing.”
      — Mary Oliver, Her Grave

      Walking the pup the last few nights, I’m reminded of what hides in plain sight from us. Rabbits standing still, waiting out the passersby. Other dog walkers, faces glowing in rapt attention to the phone while their dog cries for attention, if not from her leash mate, then perhaps from us. A phone ruins night vision immediately, but that’s not the only sense ruined. Awareness is a fragile thing, stolen away in an instant.

      Some things still scare the pup, even as she approaches nine months. She’s a teenager now, as dog years go, and most things don’t scare her on the surface. When she grows timid I pay extra attention, wondering what in the night draws her in so. A good flashlight usually reveals nothing but shadows. The pup knows better.

      The walks were what I missed most about having a dog. Dogs force a break from the comfort of the home, and pull us outside to engage with the world. Where we learn to be more aware. To confront our own senses and what we miss when we’re not fully present. Like poetry, sometimes the smallest thing means everything in this lifetime.

    • So Much to Admire

      I know, you never intended to be in this world.
      But you’re in it all the same.

      So why not get started immediately.

      I mean, belonging to it.
      There is so much to admire, to weep over.

      And to write music or poems about.

      Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
      Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
      Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
      Bless touching.

      You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
      Or not.
      I am speaking from the fortunate platform
      of many years,
      none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
      Do you need a prod?
      Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
      Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
      and remind you of Keats,
      so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
      he had a lifetime.
      — Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

      Whispers from a poet, reminding us of the urgency of the moment. Tempus fugit… time flies. Go out and live boldly. Observe and be stirred—get right in the mix. And create something meaningful that might stand on it’s own. It’s a formula for living often repeated here, in this blog about doing all of these things. My daily reminder to not waste a second on the trivial, shared with those who wish to go along for the ride.

      The thing is, when we read the stoics, when we immerse ourselves in poetry and philosophy, in nature and travel, and most of all in the audacious act of heightened awareness, we too begin to live. Less of our own time is wasted. We become hungry for more and more experience, with a burning desire to share it with all who will listen and see for themselves. By opening the senses we let the magic in.

      “Ignorance is not bliss; it’s a missed opportunity.“ — Adam Nicolson, Sea Room

      There’s a price for ignorance paid in unfulfilled wonder and delight. There’s so much to do still. So much to admire. Like that of a poet no longer with us, it’s a whisper (or a shout) to make now count. We’re just part of the choir, singing our part, reminding the congregation to dance with the miracle of life with all the enthusiasm we can muster.

    • Earning the Warmth

      Through the window
      we could see how far away it was to the gates of April.
      Let the fire now
      put on its red hat
      and sing to us.
      — Mary Oliver, November

      November comes to an end, and just like that, December is at our doorstep. The ambient light of incandescent and LED bulbs make total darkness an impossibility in most cities and suburbia now. The decorations of Christmas have exploded onto the scene, to grow exponentially over the coming weeks. When we get beyond the constant advertisements for last-chance(!) savings on gifts from every retailer on the planet, we’re left with short, crisp days and long, cold nights.

      Some of us thrive in the cold. We have layers upon layers at the ready, lightly dusted from months of being ignored but feeling just right when we slip them on once again. The stakes are driven into the edges of pavement, awaiting their role as traffic cops or road kill for errant plow drivers. Snow? It’s nothing but a possibility for most of us. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll see snow soon enough. The thrill of the crunch! The hiding of all the brown landscape in a crystal blanket. Snow would make it feel like December has arrived. If not, well, we must seek it out in higher elevations as the hikers and skiers do.

      If November is a time for thankfulness and gatherings (and beards and hastily-written first drafts), December is a time for giving and hustling to find the perfect gift for someone before we give up and give them a gift card to use in seven months when they stumble upon it in the drawer dedicated to such plastic tokens of love. We want to celebrate our love for someone with the perfect gift, and somehow it ends up feeling like a concession to just give them the money. My feeling on such things is that the person who gave the card should be a part of the experience of using the card. Experiences are always best shared with those who wish it for you.

      I’m seeking more poetry in my long nights. More warming fires with conversation and a pet snuggled up close. More time reading the books that evaded me in sunshine. More cold walks around the block with a dog that’s come to expect something new on every stroll. We learn what we are unaware of from a dog on a night walk. I’d forgotten the thrill of the sky changing from step to step, the pull of the leash as the dog sees a rabbit, and the sounds of coyotes, fox and fisher cats crying in the night. I’d forgotten the welcoming warmth of that first step into the kitchen after a brisk walk telling me; “Welcome back”. Indeed.

      The days are still getting shorter for a few more weeks. We must embrace the long, cold nights for all that is hidden in them. For we are alive, and nothing makes you feel that like getting out into it, even for a little while. It’s easy to be warm in the tropics. Up north we must earn it. And in the work we find we love it all the more.