The Kookaburras
by: Mary Oliver
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
The didn't want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now, I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
Oliver is thinking back to a moment when she could have risen past her limitations, become a god of flowers. The kookaburras ask to be freed from their confined lives, and Oliver's response is normal and very human: she says "no." It's a decision that haunts her later years, when the kookaburras have long since joined the great darkness. In the middle of night, Oliver lies in bed, her guilty heart pounding out its regrets in the prison of her ribs.
I'm writing this post at the end of a very long and stressful day. Attempting to drive my son home from school this afternoon, I noticed that many of the warning lights on my dashboard had suddenly come to life. So, I pulled over, took out the owner's manual, and tried to decipher what was happening. Being a person of little to no automotive knowledge, I failed at this task.
Therefore, I drove to the nearest Subaru dealer (the one where I initially purchased my vehicle) and tried to get a mechanic to diagnose my car's illness. No dice. The earliest appointment the dealership had was on Wednesday. Then, I stepped outside and tried to acquire a rental car for a few days. No luck. Basically, every car rental company was fresh out.
I called my wife's cousin, whose husband is a mechanic. She came in her truck, followed me back to her house, and her husband checked things out. To make a long story even longer, I can report that my car is sitting in my driveway tonight. All the lights in the dashboard are still glowing, and I have to nurse my car through the next few days until my appointment on Wednesday with the dealership.
And I've been thinking all day: why am I a poet? I should have studied to become something useful, like a mechanic. I can't fix my car by reading a sonnet to it. Can't make the lights in my dashboard turn off by reciting "Do Not Go Gentle into that Goodnight." What can I do with the gifts I have? I can write a blog post about it. That's it.
Am I regretting my life choices? Tonight, I am. Coming from a family of plumbers, I can't really fix a leaky faucet. After owning six or seven cars in my lifetime, I would have a hard time just changing a flat tire. I worked in the healthcare industry for close to 25 years, and I still get nauseated around most bodily fluids. In short, I have little practical life skills.
Again, I am at the end of a very stressful day. Take everything I write tonight with a cannabis edible.
That's what Saint Marty plans to do.
🙏🏻
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