Friday, May 26, 2017

This is how you swim inward (Mary Oliver)

I’d seen 
their hoofprints in the deep 
needles and knew 
they ended the long night 
            
under the pines, walking 
like two mute 
and beautiful women toward 
the deeper woods, so I 
                                    
got up in the dark and 
went there.  They came 
slowly down the hill 
and looked at me sitting under 
  
the blue trees, shyly 
they stepped 
closer and stared 
from under their thick lashes and even 
                                    
nibbled some damp 
tassels of weeds.  This 
is not a poem about a dream, 
though it could be. 
                                    
This is a poem about the world 
that is ours, or could be. 
Finally 
one of them – I swear it! – 
                                    
would have come to my arms. 
But the other 
stamped sharp hoof in the 
pine needles like 
                                    
the tap of sanity, 
and they went off together through 
the trees.  When I woke 
I was alone, 
                                    
I was thinking: 
so this is how you swim inward, 
so this is how you flow outward, 
so this is how you pray. 

--Mary Oliver, 
Five A.M. in the Pine Woods 

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