Live with the beetle, and the wind.

On the day that Mary Oliver died, it was dark, damp and cold in Spokane. I thought of her: How would she have viewed the freezing rain that greeted me when Luna and I stepped out the front door that morning? These are the days I crave her poetry, her reminders that the world is teeming with life and beauty.

I spent my lunch hour that afternoon in the library, hunting for The Winter Hours, which I read last January, and was strangely delighted to find it had been checked out (someone new is about to discover it's the perfect thing to read in this season). Instead I took The Leaf and the Cloud and Long Life. I opened to this:

I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.
But it's spring, 

and the thrush is in the woods,
somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing. 

And so, now, I am standing by the open door.
And now I am stepping down onto the grass. 

I am touching a few leaves.
I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies
move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field. 

And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening
is the real work. 

Maybe the world, without us,
is the real poem.

(excerpted from "The Book of Time," The Leaf and the Cloud)

Looking and listening is the real work: actively noticing the everyday things that we take for granted or let sit in the background of our lives, and considering our place in the universe. Part of the beauty of her writing is that her observations of life are also ones of death. We must take the time now to appreciate what is here.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider
the orderliness of the world. Notice
something you have never noticed before, 

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket
whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb. 

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,
shaking the water-sparks from its wings. 

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,
like the diligent leaves. 

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of this world
and the responsibilities of your life. 

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance. 

In the glare of your mind, be modest.
And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling. 

Live with the beetle, and the wind. 

This is the dark bread of the poem.
This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem. 

("Flare," verse 12, The Leaf and the Cloud)

When I read back through some of my posts here, I am struck by how her writing has resonated so deeply in my adult life.

Not to mention how her devotion to her dogs has reminded me of the unique joy and heartbreaking love they bring to us (and believe me, I've needed these reminders). I've tried reading a few selections of Dog Songs aloud to Joel and found my throat catching each time.

What do you say, Percy? I am thinking
of sitting out on the sand to watch
the moon rise. It's full tonight.
So we go 

and the moon rises, so beautiful it
makes me shudder, makes me think about
time and space, makes me take
measure of myself: one iota
pondering heaven. Thus we sit, myself 

thinking how grateful I am for the moon's
perfect beauty and also, oh! how rich
it is to love the world. Percy, meanwhile,
leans against me and gazes up
into my face. As though I were just as wonderful
as the perfect moon.

("The Sweetness of Dogs," from Dog Songs)

Joel and I have a running list of writers, actors, musicians and public figures whose deaths we know will in some way shake us. Mary Oliver belongs on that list for me, though I didn't realize it until it happened. But mourning her loss means celebrating the world she illuminated for me and so many others, and there's no sadness in that. Her words bring me back to life.

(Further reading: Mary Oliver's Poems Taught Me How to Live)