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1
If there is life after the earth-life, will you come with me?
Even then? Since we’re bound to be something, why not
together. Imagine! Two little stones, two fleas under the
wing of a gull, flying along through the fog! Or, ten blades
of grass. Ten loops of honeysuckle, all flung against each
other, at the edge of Race Road! Beach plums! Snowflakes,
coasting into the winter woods, making a very small sound,
like this
sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
as they marry the dusty bodies of the pitch-pines. Or, rain –
that gray light running over the sea, pocking it, lacquering
it, coming, all morning and afternoon from the west wind’s
youth and abundance and jollity –--- pinging and jangling
down upon the roofs of Provincetown.
2
You are young. So you know everything. You Leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But, listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubts, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart’s little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks ---- when you hear that unmistakable
pounding --- when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming --- then row, row for your life
toward it.
3
And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh
and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun
would sing if the sun could sing, if light had a
mouth and a tongue, if the sky had a throat, if
God just wasn’t an idea but shoulders and a spine,
gathered from everywhere, even the most distant
planets, blazing up. Where am I? Even the rough
words come to me now, quick as thistles. Who
made your tyrant’s body, your thirst, your delv-
ing, your gladness? Oh tiger, oh bone-breaker,
of tree on fire! Get away from me. Come closer.
4
But how did you come burning down like a
wild needle, knowing
just where my heart was?
5
There are night birds, in the garden below us, singing.
Oh, listen!
For a moment I thought it was
our own bodies.
6
When the sun goes down
the roses
fling off their red dresses
the wind is coming
over the sandy streets
of the town called moonlight
with his long arms
with his silvery mouth
his hands
humorous at first
then serious
then crazy
touching their faces their dark petals
until they begin rising and falling:
the honeyed seizures.
All day they have been busy being roses
gazing responsible over the sand
into the sky into the blue ocean
so now why not
a little comfort
a little rippling pleasure
You there, puddle in lamplight at your midnight desk ---
you there, rewriting nature
so anyone can understand it ---
what will you say about the roses ---
their sighing, their tossing ---
and the want of heart,
and the trill of heart,
and the burning mouth
of the wind?
9
And what did you think love would be like?
A summer day? The brambles in their places,
and the long stretches of mud? Flowers in every
field, in every garden, with their soft beaks and
their pastel shoulders? On one street after an-
other, the litter ticks in the gutter. In one room
after another, the lovers meet, quarrel, sicken,
break apart, cry out. One or two leap from
windows. Most simply lean, exhausted, their
thin arms on the sill. They have done all that
they could. The golden eagle, that lives not far
from here, has perhaps a thousand tiny feathers
flowing from the back of its head, each one
shaped like an infinitely small but perfect spear.
10
Dark is as dark does
Something with the smallest wings shakes itself
from under a thumb of bark.
The ocean breathes in its silver jacket.
Outside, hanging on the trellis, in the moonlight,
the flowers are opening, each one
as fancy in its unfurl as a difficult thought.
Outside: the almost liquid beauty of the flowers.
Now the linnets wake.
Now the pearls of their voices are falling
in the morning light.
Did we sleep long enough? Is it this life still, or
is it the next life, already? Are we gone, then?
Are we there?
How will we ever know?
11
Now only the humorous shadows that the moon
makes, playing the corners of the furniture, flung and
dropped clothing, the back of books, the architecture
of electronics, and so on. The bed that level and soft
rise is empty. We are gone.
So, say that dreams, possibilities, emotions, while we
are gone from the house, take shape. Say there are
thirty at least, one to represent each year, and more
leaning in the doorway between the slope of the beach
and the pale walls of the room, just moon-gazing for
a moment or two, before they come into that starry
garden, our house at night.
Some of those thirty are as awkward as children,
romping and gripping. Others have become birds,
clouds, trees dipping their heart-shaped leaves, that
long song. Here and there a face that won’t trans-
form --- eyes of stone, expressions of pettiness and
sulk. And now it is winter, and in the black air
the snow is falling into its own sweet leisure, for its
own reasons. And now the snow has deepened, and
created form: two white ponies. How they gallop in
the waves. How they steam, and turn to look for
each other. How they love the clouds and the tender,
long grass and the horizons and the hills. How they
nuzzle, how they nicker, how they reach down, at the
unclosable spring in the notch of the pasture, to be
replenished.
12
The cricket did not actually seek the hearth,
but the thicket of the carpet beneath the refriger-
ator. The whirring above was company, and
from it issues night and day the most prized
gift of the gods: warmth. Especially in the
evenings the cricket was happy, and sang.
Later, in the night, it crept out. There was not
a single night when it did not find, sooner or
later, a sweet crumb, a small plump seed of
some sort between the floorboards. Thus, it
got used to hope. It revised altogether its idea
of what the world was like, and of what was
going to happen next, or, even, eventually. It
though: how sufficient are these empty rooms!
It thought: here I am still, in my black suit,
warm and content --- and drew a little music
from its thighs. As though the twilight
underneath the refrigerator were the world. As
though the winter would never come.
13
It is midnight, or almost.
Out in the world the wind stretches
bundles back into itself like a hundred
bolts of lace then stretches again
flows itself over the windowsill and into the room
it scatters the papers from the desk
it is in love with disorganization
now the manuscript it on the floor, and reshuffled
now the chapters have married each other
now the alphabet it lost
now the white curtains are tossing wing on wing
now the body of the wind snaps
it sniffs the closet it touches into the pockets of the coats
it touches shells upon the shelves
it touches the tops of books
it slides along the walls
now the lamplight wavers
as the body of the wind swings over the light
outside a million stars are burning
now the ocean calls to the wind
now the wind like water slips under the sash
into the yard the garden the long black sky
in my room after such disturbance I sit, smiling.
I pick up a pencil, I put it down, I pick it up again.
I am thinking of you.
I am always thinking of you.
- Mary Oliver
