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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