September 28: "Two Kinds of Deliverance," Gail, Setting Free

Mary Oliver looks for deliverance . . .

Two Kinds of Deliverance

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

Last night the geese came back,

slanting fast

from the blossom of the rising moon down

to the black pond.  A muskrat

swimming in the twilight saw them and hurried

to the secret lodges to tell everyone

spring had come.

And so it had.

By morning when I went out

the last of the ice had disappeared, blackbirds

sang on the shores.  Every year

the geese, returning,

do this, I don't

know how.

2.

The curtains opened and there was

an old man in a headdress of feathers,

leather leggings and a vest made

from the skin of some animal.  He danced

in a kind of surly rapture, and the trees

in the fields far away

began to mutter and suck up their long roots.

Slowly they advanced until they stood

pressed to the schoolhouse windows.

3.

I don't know

lots of things but I know this next year

when spring

flows over the starting point I'll think I'm going to

drown in the shimmering miles of it and then

one or two birds will fly me over

the threshold.

                    As for the pain

of others, of course it tries to be

abstract, but then

there flares up out of a vanished wilderness, like fire,

still blistering:  the wrinkled face

of an old Chippewa

smiling, hating us,

dancing for his life.

The word "deliverance" has a few meanings, but the main one (the one, I'm sure, Mary Oliver intended for this poem) is "the act of being rescued or set free."  So, the geese come to the black pond and set it free of the ice and snow of winter.  The old man in the headdress sets the trees free of their roots.  The blistering face of the old Chippewa tries to rescue his life from the pain and hatred of his and his people's past.

This afternoon, I learned a poet friend was delivered from her suffering two days ago.  Gail had been in hospice care, her heart failing in the bed of her chest.  Over the course of a couple weeks, she had good days and bad days.  Times when she struggled to keep her eyes open, her mind focused, for just a few minutes.  Other times when she was lucid and able to sustain extended conversations.

Yet, as must happen with each one of us, Gail was delivered from the icy black pond of this world to the verdant green world of the next.  Gail was, as I said above, a poet.  She was also a visual artist.  Earlier this summer, I visited her studio, watched her work, and admired her eye for beauty.  She was the real deal--painter and poet, mother and grandmother, friend to all.

What happens when a poet dies?  I've been pondering that question since I found out about Gail's passing.  I imagine her deliverance was like the geese descending out of a moony sky, looking to rest their tired wings after a long and difficult journey.  That's where I imagine Gail is right now, standing with Mary Oliver on the shores of the black pond, listening to blackbirds sing their psalm to spring.

Saint Marty gives thanks tonight for Gail's time on this planet, for her deliverance of beauty with words and brushes and paints.