The Kingfisher
by: Mary Oliver
The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world--so long as you don't mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn't have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water--hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don't say he's right. Neither
do I say he's wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.
The kingfisher lives his life perfectly, guided by the story of hunger. He dives into the bright sea, surfaces with a silver leaf in his beak, and then swings back with a rough and easy cry. He doesn't have to think about what he's doing because it's in his kingfisher DNA. He inherited his perfection.
I don't strive to be perfect. In fact, I would say that most of my days are filled with one imperfect moment after another, from the time my alarm goes off in the morning until I collapse into exhaustion at the end of the day. Human beings are imperfect creatures doing imperfect things, making imperfect choices.
Today was a slow day of imperfection for me. I imperfectly slept in (couldn't sleep past 8 a.m.). Imperfectly practiced music for weekend church services (hey, it's called practice for a reason). Imperfectly played the pipe organ for Mass at 4 p.m. (yes, I hit a few jazz chords). Imperfectly finished going through leftover shit from my old car (I now own a car without a CD player--so there were lots of unusable CDs). Imperfectly ate dinner (spilled sauce on my shirt). Imperfectly took my puppy for a walk (she was the Energizer bunny, wanting to go on and on). And imperfectly sat down to write this blog post (my internet crapped out on me, and I had to contact customer support).
I would say that the only thing I do perfectly is being imperfect. I'm not the greatest musician in the world. Or the greatest teacher or brother or husband or father. All of the poems I write are approximations of the poems I envision in my head. Let's call them near misses. Even this blog post, when I type the last period after the last sentence, will be a pale imitation of my real thoughts and feelings.
But being human is not about perfection. It's about striving to be better. I try to be the best version of myself each and every day, and I usually fail each and every day. But, true failure isn't failing. True failure is not getting up and dusting myself off after I stumble and fall.
At the end of my last puppy walk this evening, I snapped a picture of the sun trapped in a maple tree. A Mary Oliver moment. I thought it was beautiful. Perfect as only nature can be perfect. Ask the kingfisher.
So, I can recognize something perfect, just like Oliver, and I can try to write something about it, a blog post or poem or essay. But I will inevitably fail because I am human. And I'm not Mary Oliver.
I'm Marty, patron saint of fucking up.
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