The Swan by Mary Oliver***

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?
© Mary Oliver.


***so, yeah, I know there is no swan in my photos....but even after a day full of rain, I have figured out what beauty is for.

***other people's words

The Moths

There’s a kind of white moth,
I don’t know
what kind,
that glimmers
by mid-May in the forest,
just as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.
If you notice anything,
it leads you to notice
more
and more.
And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around,
looking
at this and that.
If I stopped
the pain
was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought,
maybe
the world
can’t be saved,
the pain was unbearable.
Finally,
I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.
How long do they live,
fluttering
in and out of the shadows?
You aren’t much,
I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond,
and grinned.
The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.
At night,
sometimes,
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn,
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.
Mary Oliver


*** I just keep using other people's words lately. Mary Oliver is a brilliant poet, don't you think? Her poetry often comes to my mind when I am out taking my photos. "If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more." I don't have much to say lately except things I don't trust myself to say right now... this city gets on my very last nerve sometimes(if you haven't noticed), all the time lately....and rather than go into a raving lunatic rant which may reduce me to tears, I am trying to collect my thoughts coherently...so that when I explain it to you, you will be able to understand me better. I only hope the City of Nanaimo can understand me(us), too...before we all explode. I think I need to live far away from here...and never visit.

"The Chance to Love Everything"

All summer I made friends
with the creatures nearby -
they flowed through the fields
and under the tent walls,

or padded through the door,
grinning through their many teeth,
looking for seeds,
suet, sugar; muttering and humming,

opening the breadbox, happiest when
there was milk and music. But once
in the night I heard a sound

outside the door, the canvas
bulged slightly - something
was pressing inward at eye level.

I watched, trembling, sure I had heard
the click of claws, the smack of lips
outside my gauzy house -
I imagined the red eyes,
the broad tongue, the enormous lap.

Would it be friendly too?
Fear defeated me. And yet,
not in faith and not in madness
but with the courage I thought
my dream deserved,
I stepped outside. It was gone.

Then I whirled at the sound of some
shambling tonnage.
Did I see a black haunch slipping
back through the trees? Did I see
the moonlight shining on it?
Did I actually reach out my arms
toward it, toward paradise falling, like
the fading of the dearest, wildest hope -
the dark heart of the story that is all
the reason for its telling?

by Mary Oliver

*Don't you just love her poetry? Sigh.

Walk with us? Kaslo River walk....

Climbing The Chagrin River by Mary Oliver.


We enter the green river,
heron harbor,
mud-basin lined


with snagheaps, where turtles
sun themselves--we push
through the falling
silky weight

bounding down
through the black flanks
of wet rocks--we wade

striped warm and cold
under hemlock
and white pine--climb

stone steps into
the timeless castles
of emerald eddies,

swirls, channels
cold as ice tumbling
out of a white flow--

sheer sheets
flying off rocks,
frivolous and lustrous,

skirting the secret pools--
cradles
full of the yellow hair
of last year's leaves

where grizzled fish
hang halfway down,
like tarnished swords,
while around them

fingerlings sparkle
and descend,
nails of light
in the loose
racing waters.

The Rapture

All summer

I wandered the fields

that were thickening every morning,

every rainfall,

with weeds and blossoms,

with the long loops

of the shimmering,

and the extravagant-

pale as flames they rose

and fell back,

replete and beautiful-

that was all there was-

and I too

once or twice,

at least,

felt myself rising,

my boots

touching suddenly the tops of the weeds,

the blue and silky air-

listen,

passion did it,

called me forth,

addled me,

stripped me clean

then covered me with the cloth of happiness-

I think there is no other prize,

only rapture the gleaming,

rapture the illogical the weightless-

whether it be for the perfect shapeliness

of something you love-

like an old German song-

or of someone-

or the dark floss of the earth itself,

heavy and electric.

At the edge of sweet sanity open such wild,

blind wings.

(Mary Oliver)

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful,
the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common,
the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
(Mary Oliver)