September 19: "The Loon on Oak-Head Pond," Moonlit Walk, Puppy Paradise

Mary Oliver and a loon . . . 

The Loon on Oak-Head Pond

by:  Mary Oliver

cries for three days, in the gray mist.

cries for the north it hopes it can find.

plunges, and comes up with a slapping pickerel.

blinks its red eye.

cries again.

you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it.

you sit for a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,

in the silence that follows.

as though it were your own twilight.

as though it were your own vanishing song.

I just went for a moonlit walk and then I did what a lot of people do at the end of long and busy days--scrolled through my Facebook feed to see whose birthday it is, who experienced a loss, who ate something delicious for dinner.  It's a bad habit, and I know that Facebook reality is very different from real life.  However, those few moments every night keep me abreast of what's happening in the lives of people I know and love.

Tonight, I came across a post by a good friend who lost her beloved dog today, and it broke my heart.  My friend included about 50 candid shots of her beloved fur-child, from young doghood to old doghood.  For a few moments, I lost myself in the dog's soulful eyes and black-lipped smile.

If there's one poet who knows how to write about loss beautifully, it's Mary Oliver.  The word "cries" starts the first two lines of this poem.  That's a pretty good indication that death is close by, waiting to loom out of Oak-Head Pond, perhaps in the beak of the loon.  

Every morning for the past month or so, I've heard a loon calling to the rising sun.  (I live close to a small lake, so loons often summer near me.)  If you've never heard a loon's cry, you won't understand its gray mist and craving for north.  It's a sound that's filled with longing and lament.  At least for me.

Oliver doesn't identify the "you" in the second half of the poem--the one that visits every afternoon, sitting under the thick pines, waiting, waiting to hear that sound and the silence that follows it.  The you could be a lover.  A parent.  A child.  Or an old, beloved dog.

Lots of people write about pets crossing the rainbow bridge.  I prefer this version.  A dog in its twilight years, patiently sitting in the shade of a pine, listening to the loon sing its vanishing song.  This image gives me comfort because it's full of the lap of waves, smell of pine, and birdsong echoing across the pond.  It's dog paradise.

So, tonight, this post and this poem are for my friend, Amber, whose gentle giant of a dog is relaxing on the shores of Oak-Head Pond, beneath the needles and cones of a tree, listening patiently as a loon serenades him to puppy paradise.

Saint Marty does think that all dogs go to heaven.