The Kitten
by: Mary Oliver
More amazed than anything
I took the perfectly black
stillborn kitten
with the one large eye
in the center of its small forehead
from the house cat's bed
and buried it in a field
behind the house.
I suppose I could have given it
to a museum,
I could have called the local
newspaper.
But instead I took it out into the field
and opened the earth
and put it back
saying, it was real,
saying, life is infinitely inventive,
saying, what other amazements
lie in the dark seed of the earth, yes,
I think I did right to go out alone
and give it back peacefully, and cover the place
with the reckless blossoms of weeds.
I find the tender grace of this poem incredibly moving--Mary Oliver taking the stillborn kitten into the field and giving it back to the earth, acknowledging the kitten's fragile reality, its infinite wonder. The universe is full of amazements like this, and our job is to do the right thing: treat these amazements with respect and honor.
I am sitting in my home office, typing this blog post. On the righthand corner of my desk sits an amazement. My friend, Helen, on a trip to Ireland, climbed Croagh Patrick. Croagh Patrick is the holiest mountain in Ireland. According to legend, Saint Patrick fasted for 40 days on its summit, and since that time, it remains a popular pilgrimage site for devout travelers.
Helen went to Ireland with one of her closest friends. As I've said in previous posts, Helen was a force of nature. She had the kind of stamina and strength that defied explanation, walking for miles and miles each day in her sandals. So, the fact that she decided to climb the 2,507-foot mountain on her vacation is really not a surprise. What she brought back for me from that mountaintop was a surprise.
At Christmastime that year, Helen presented me with a gift bag. Now Helen's presents were works of art in and of themselves. This bag was uniquely beautiful, and inside was a gorgeous card filled with an elegant, handwritten message from Helen. Besides the card, the bag contained a collection of Seamus Heaney poems that she purchased at the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in County Derry. (Heaney's former residence has been converted into a museum for the late poet.) And underneath the card and book, wrapped in delicate tissue paper, was a rock.
But it wasn't just any rock. It was a rock from the top of Croagh Patrick, and on the rock was a rusty brown mineral image of Bigfoot. When Helen found the rock, she immediately thought of me. She carried it down from the mountain, put it in her suitcase, and brought it home.
Since Helen gave me that rock, it has been one of my most treasured possessions. Because she found it on Croagh Patrick and because of the miracle of Bigfoot imprinted on it. However, right around the time that Helen died last year, the rock simply disappeared. I searched and searched for it, but never found it. Like Bigfoot, it seemed to have slid into another dimension.
Eventually, I came to the conclusion that someone who didn't know the rock's significance had taken it outside and given it peacefully back to the earth. I accepted that explanation, because rocks simply don't stand up and walk away, even rocks from Bigfoot.
Two days ago, I was cleaning my house, getting ready for the monthly visit from my book club. As I moved some books (which, I would like to point out, I have done MANY times before), there sat my sacred rock like a forgotten prayer.
As I held that stone on Sunday afternoon, I almost felt like Helen had given it to me a second time. In the past few weeks (perhaps due to the change in seasons and shorter days), I've been struggling a little bit with sadness. So, there was something very powerful in having that piece of Ireland and Saint Patrick and Bigfoot and Helen in my fingers. I could almost hear Helen's voice in my head: "You are frickin' awesome!"
So, yes, Virginia, amazements still do exist in the world.
Saint Marty is staring at one right now on the corner of his desk.
