{"id":6918,"date":"2021-02-26T08:41:58","date_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/?p=6918"},"modified":"2021-02-26T08:58:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-26T15:58:03","slug":"mary-oliver-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/26\/mary-oliver-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Oliver – Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring
\nby Mary Oliver<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Somewhere
\na black bear
\nhas just risen from sleep
\nand is staring<\/p>\n

down the mountain.
\nAll night
\nin the brisk and shallow restlessness
\nof early spring<\/p>\n

I think of her,
\nher four black fists
\nflicking the gravel,
\nher tongue<\/p>\n

like a red fire
\ntouching the grass,
\nthe cold water.
\nThere is only one question:<\/p>\n

how to love this world.
\nI think of her
\nrising
\nlike a black and leafy ledge<\/p>\n

to sharpen her claws against
\nthe silence
\nof the trees.
\nWhatever else<\/p>\n

my life is
\nwith its poems
\nand its music
\nand its glass cities,<\/p>\n

it is also this dazzling darkness
\ncoming
\ndown the mountain,
\nbreathing and tasting;<\/p>\n

all day I think of her \u2014
\nher white teeth,
\nher wordlessness,
\nher perfect love.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a> \u2014 from New and Selected Poems<\/a>, by Mary Oliver<\/font><\/p>\n


\/ Image by Marie Hale<\/a> \/<\/em><\/font><\/p>\n

We have snow on the ground here in Colorado, but spring is coming. You can see it in the brilliant morning sunlight, in the first tentative buds on branches. We are, all of us, beginning to shake off the long hibernation of winter to encounter the world once again, like Mary Oliver\u2019s bear.<\/p>\n

The poem evokes for us the image of this black bear, this huge being, \u201clike a black and leafy ledge,\u201d waking from its slumbers and rather roughly encountering the world once again. But that renewed interaction between bear and gravel, grass, and tree is a form a sacrament. It is the embodiment of a questions: how to love this world.<\/p>\n

The poem circles back to the poet, her human life filled with creativity and cities\u2026<\/p>\n

Whatever else<\/p>\n

my life is
\nwith its poems
\nand its music
\nand its glass cities\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

But we sense that the list is incomplete. Something fundamental has been left out of the first part of that list. That connection with nature. No\u2026 deeper even than that. Something archetypal. The great primal being within as it awakens and encounters the world.<\/p>\n

it is also this dazzling darkness
\ncoming
\ndown the mountain,
\nbreathing and tasting;<\/i><\/p>\n

Despite its massive presence, it is silent. Without words. Beyond words.<\/p>\n

(The phrase \u201cdazzling darkness\u201d is of particular significance within Western esoteric traditions, tracing back to a poem by the important early Christian mystic Dionysius the Areopagite<\/a>. I suspect Ms. Oliver used it intentionally to suggest the same mysterious, vast, silent presence.)<\/p>\n

all day I think of her -\u2013
\nher white teeth,
\nher wordlessness,
\nher perfect love.<\/i><\/p>\n

I have always felt a special connection with the animal world. As a child, for a time I planned to become a veterinarian. I remember often meditating as a boy on the wordlessness of animals. What sort of world do they inhabit without words, without names for things or places or people\u2026 or even for themselves? I tried to imagine that world, to enter it with my own wordlessness. Like Mary Oliver\u2019s bear. In our wordlessness, when we stop naming things, we find that we encounter everything more immediately, more fully. When we name a thing or person or experience, we have labeled it, categorized it and, as a result, moved it outside of the realm of direct experience and shunted it safely into a mental idea of the moment, rather than the living moment itself. When we name things through incessant thought, we then encounter our thoughts about the experience and not the actual experience. We end up seeing only reflections of the mind and forget how to see the world as it is.<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver\u2019s bear reminds us to let that great black bear rise from its sleep and encounter the world in its wordlessness. This is how we can begin to answer the \u201conly one question: how to love this world.\u201d We embody perfect love when we are truly present in our dazzling silence and not elsewhere in our words and thoughts. Love is connection, contact, encountering a person or place as it is, as we are. Love is being right here.<\/p>\n

Have a beautiful day, one of wordless spring awakening!<\/p>\n


\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/a>Recommended Books: Mary Oliver<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n

\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
New and Selected Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nWhy I Wake Early<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nDream Work<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nHouse of Light<\/a><\/small><\/td>\nThirst: Poems<\/a><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
More Books >><\/a><\/i><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\n<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\"Mary<\/a>\n<\/td>\n\nMary Oliver<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

US (1935 \u2013 2019) Timeline<\/a>
\nSecular or Eclectic<\/a><\/a>
\n<\/a><\/a><\/em>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1935.<\/p>\n

As a young writer, Mary Oliver was influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay and, in fact, as a teenager briefly lived in the home of the recently deceased Millay, helping to organize Millay\u2019s papers.<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver attended college at Ohio State University, and later at Vassar College.<\/p>\n

Mary Oliver\u2019s poetry is deeply aware of the natural world, particularly the birds and trees and ponds of her adopted state of Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Her collection of poetry \u201cAmerican Primitive\u201d won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984.<\/p>\n

More poetry by Mary Oliver<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spring by Mary Oliver Somewhere a black bear has just risen from sleep and is staring down the mountain. All night in the brisk and shallow restlessness of early spring I think of her, her four black fists flicking the gravel, her tongue like a red fire touching the grass, the cold water. There is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2404,2405,93,700,544,2406],"class_list":["post-6918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-bear","tag-hibernate","tag-mary-oliver","tag-silence","tag-spring","tag-wordlessness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6918"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6923,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6918\/revisions\/6923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.poetry-chaikhana.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}