Somehow a poem by Mary Oliver ended up on the screen this morning. One of those things where the internet sends me stuff it thinks suits my whims and predilections. It's frightening how accurate they can be! Here's the poem:
I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, with the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Many picked up on this particular poem when the pandemic struck and indeed, Mary Oliver became more of a household name in the last couple of years. Maybe interest was stoked by our rather desperate search for calm. Or maybe her death three years ago put her in a flash of limelight. And surely we need her now more than in years of greater contentment.
I discovered her in a weird way that today seems quaintly of a bygone era: I used to go to my local Borders Bookstore on a regular basis. And I would browse and pick up a stack of books and then sit down, perhaps at the coffee shop, and I would read a passage here, a poem there. Somehow I had pulled Oliver from the shelf and I was hooked. And then I read about her as a person and I was hooked even more.
For me, Oliver was one of the few poets (indeed writers) who could link emotion to nature seamlessly and present it as one. She liked solitude (though she lived with her partner for some four decades) and took long walks that gave her so much material for her poems! And what was significant on those walks for her is just the stuff that I may have thought to be significant. Of course, she had exactly the right words for it. We the readers could coast, along for the ride. And it was always a ride worth taking.
It's rare for me to love poetry. Sure, I have absorbed all of Szymborska and most of Neruda, and I have a book of Wordsworth that I refuse to ever give up, but on a daily basis, I prefer prose. Still, Oliver is forever in my pocket and I am so happy that some genius metric put that poem on my computer screen this morning.
I woke early and worked hard outside. Four hours, nonstop. Snip, clip, dig, water. I'm taking a break from outdoor work in the next few days so I have to get my fields in shape to withstand my purposeful neglect. The day is sunny, beautiful and everything about my work is grand. Here are today's favorite photos from the farmette flower fields:
Breakfast? After noon. On the porch. With a screen before us on account of the hearings.
And soon after, I pick up Snowdrop from Invention Camp. They have these camp spirit games, hence the cap.
We come to the farmhouse. Two things to note here: first, there are a few fraises des bois ripe and ready for picking in my two fraises des bois pots on the picnic table. They're covered by a net so that the cheepers or other berry loving animals wont get to them. We untangle the little berries and Snowdrop has her first taste of what is a common enough fruit in Europe, but is never ever sold in an American market.
Too, I show her where some ripe raspberries have popped out.
She tells me -- you're lucky to live on a farm. I smile at that. Without Ed's presence and help, I'd give up on the farmette projects in two minutes.
Toward evening I take her home and linger there for a while, chatting to my daughter while the kids play. What kids? Well, yes, this guy...
But too the older ones, along with some neighborhood children that inevitably stop by in the course of a summer eve.
We eat on the porch. Why? Because at 8:30 (which seems to be our summer dinner hour these days) the light outside is so beautiful! This beautiful!
A canvas of warm and gentle color: a dab here, a fleck there.
