Some Herons
by: Mary Oliver
A blue preacher
flew toward the swamp,
in slow motion.
On the leafy banks,
an old Chinese poet,
hunched in the white gown of his wings,
was waiting.
The water
was the kind of dark silk
that has silver lines
shot through it
when it is touched by the wind
or is splashed upward,
in a small, quick flower,
by the life beneath it.
The preacher
made his difficult landing,
his skirts up around his knees.
The poet's eyes
flared, just as a poet's eyes
are said to do
when the poet is awakened
from the forest of meditation.
It was summer.
It was only a few moments past the sun's rising,
which meant that the whole long sweet day
lay before them.
They greeted each other,
rumpling their gowns for an instant,
and then smoothing them.
They entered the water,
and instantly two more herons--
equally as beautiful--
joined them and stood just beneath them
in the black, polished water
where they fished, all day.
In case you didn't notice, Oliver is writing about herons. The preacher and Old Chinese poet--they wade into the water at the end of the poem, and they' re joined by "two more herons" The most important word here is "more." More herons in a poem already filled with herons. The preacher flies toward the swamp, and the old Chinese poet hunches in the "white gown of his wings." The promise of feather and flight is all through Oliver's lines.
At the end, all four--heron preacher, heron poet, and two more equally beautiful herons--are in the black, polished water together, fishing. All are connected to words--the word of God, word of poet, and words of nature. There's really no separating any of them.
Words are things with feathers--they beat their wings against air and water. They insist on being admired and fed, kept alive by breath and scale. Emily Dickinson said Hope is a thing with feathers. Perhaps there's no difference between words and Hope. They're one in the same. In his gospel, the poet apostle John describes Christ as the "word made flesh."
What I'm getting at tonight is the power of language. To pray. To inspire. To save. To create. Think of the Book of Genesis, how the universe is composed. God speaks everything into being--light, land, sea, sky, and all the teeming creatures. God breathes life in humans. We are breath, if you subscribe to Christian doctrine. We are all words made flesh. Herons, diving from the orange heavens of sunrise or set, from the black shadow trees, into the swamp waters of God's poem.
God says let there be poetry, and so does Saint Marty . . .
Nice picture!
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