Spring
by: Mary Oliver
All day the flicker
has anticipated
the lust of the season, by
shouting. He scouts up
tree after tree and at
a certain place begins
to cry out. My, in his
black-freckled vest, bay body with
red trim and sudden chrome
underwings, he is
dapper. Of course somebody
listening nearby
hears him; she answers
with a sound like hysterical
laughter, and rushes out into
the field where he is poised
on an old phone pole, his head
swinging, his wings
opening and shutting in a kind of
butterfly stroke. She can't
resist; they touch; they flutter.
How lightly, altogether, they accept
the great task, of carrying life
forward! In the crown of an oak
they choose a small tree-cave
which they enter with sudden quietness
and modesty. And, for a while,
the wind that can be
a knife or a hammer, subsides.
They listen
to the thrushes.
The sky is blue, or the rain
falls with its spills of pearl.
Around their wreath of darkness
the leaves of the world unfurl.
For over seven months, I've been exploring the universe with Mary Oliver as my guide. She inspires me to be a better caretaker, person, and poet. I've always had a great respect for the mysteries of nature, and Oliver fully embodies those mysteries. She asks questions without needing answers. Observes without having to explain. All around her, leaves unfurl, rain falls, and birds laugh and sing.
Human beings are inherently curious animals. That's hardwired into us. We like to understand how things work, from the subatomic to the celestial. Perhaps that's the divine part of ourselves. If you believe we are made in the image of God, then the need to create and comprehend is just a reflection of the great Poet who wrote us into existence.
Today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and Neil Armstrong taking that one giant leap onto the lunar surface. Fifty-four years ago, three human beings were kicking up dust in the Sea of Tranquility, and the entire planet was watching. I'm sure it felt like humankind had just reached up and touched the face of God.
Yet, in the grand scheme of things, we still don't understand a whole lot. We've made great scientific and technological advances, yet we're still pretty much those apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey encountering the monolith for the first time. We still kill each other over waterholes and exploit resources.
I was an astronomy nerd when I was a kid. I know that's hard to believe, given my current state of coolness. I had a cheap telescope, subscribed to Astronomy magazine, and got geeked about things like eclipses and meteor showers and sunspots. I can't tell you how many nights I spent studying the surface of the moon, imagining what it was like to walk on its powdery landscape.
I never wanted to be an astronaut or physicist. Didn't study laws of motion or Einstein's relativity. I was just enthralled with the idea that, when I saw Betelgeuse shining in the heavens, that light was 430 years old. By looking up at the stars, I was literally peering through a window into the past. Pretty cool.
Mary Oliver probably found that pretty cool, too. The past shining down on the present into the future. Time travel, in a way. When the light from Betelgeuse hits Earth tonight, that light came into being a couple months after playwright Christopher Marlowe was murdered in England and Mumtaz Mahal, Queen of India and inspiration for the Taj Mahal, was born.
We are surrounded by miracles, each and every day. We just don't pay that much attention to them, from Oliver's flicker to Galileo's mountains on the moon. The universe is unfurling around us, and we're just hatchlings, really, looking up at the blue, blue sky from the bowl of our nest, hungry and desperate.
That's Saint Marty's one small step of a blog post tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment