Tribute to My Favorite Poet

Mary Oliver

“...a hundred white-sided dolphins

on a summer day,

each one, as God himself

could not appear more acceptable

a hundred times,

in a body blue and black threading through

the sea foam

and lifting himself up from the opened

tents of the waves on his fishtail,

to look

with the moon of his eye

into my heart...”

Mary Oliver (verse 2, “One hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day”)

You can open one of Mary Oliver's many books to any random page and find words that cause the heart to burst wide open with love and gratitude. Her faith is in every line she wrote, though it resides in no temple, church or mosque, only in the cathedral of nature. I don't believe a more spiritual person has ever walked the earth, and that includes Jesus and Buddha. She found the sacred by seeing, in minute detail, what was right before her eyes. Then she painted word pictures so clear and crisp that even children understood them.

Mary Oliver died yesterday at the age of 83. Such a gift to the world, and such a loss. But she leaves us with the best of her—her beautiful spirit in every word she ever wrote. As honest as she was gifted, what she wrote and spoke sometimes made religious people uncomfortable, especially when she identified God in nature. She wrote about that too. For example, in her prose poem, “The Word:” (What Do We Know, p.4)

“How wonderful! I speak of the soul and seven people rise from their chairs and leave the room, seven others lean forward to listen. I speak of the body, the spirit, the mockingbird, the hollyhock, leaves opening in the rain, music, faith, angels seen at dusk—and seven more people leave the room and are seen running down the road. Seven more stay where they are but make murmurous disruptive sounds. Another seven hang their heads, feigning disinterest though their hearts are open, their hope is high that they will hear the word even again. The word is already, for them, the song in the forest. They know already how everything is better—the dark trees less terrible, the ocean less hungry—when it comes forth, and looks around with its crisp and lovely eye, and begins to sing.”

She was a woman who walked her own path, remained true to her own vision for all of her life. She didn't write for prizes, though she received many, and she didn't write to please others, though her following is legion. She wrote because her soul was full of wonder that simply had to be expressed. She shared her beautiful spirit with us from a fairly reclusive and unadorned life. For that life and its legacy, I am eternally grateful.

                                                          In the Spirit,

                                                             Jane