The Night Traveler
by: Mary Oliver
Passing by, he could be anybody:
A thief, a tradesman, a doctor
On his way to a worried house.
But when he stops at your gate,
Under the room where you lie half-asleep,
You know it is not just anyone--
It is the Night Traveler.
You lean your arms on the sill
And stare down. But all you can see
Are bits of wilderness attached to him--
Twigs, loam and leaves,
Vines and blossoms. Among these
You feel his eyes, and his hands
Lifting something in the air.
He has a gift for you, but it has no name.
It is windy and woolly.
He holds it in the moonlight, and it sings
Like a newborn beast,
Like a child at Christmas,
Like your own heart as it tumbles
In love's green bed.
You take it, and he is gone.
All night--and all your life, if you are willing--
It will nuzzle your face, cold-nosed,
Like a small white wolf;
It will curl in your palm
Like a hard blue stone;
It will liquefy into a cold pool
Which, when you dive into it,
Will hold you like a mossy jaw.
A bath of light. An answer.
I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a comforting or sobering poem. Certainly, it has elements of Yuletide in it--a Night Traveler under your windowsill in the middle of the night, lifting a gift, windy and wooly, a beast newborn that sings like a child at Christmas. And that gift is the answer to something: a prayer or wish or hidden yearning.
Mary Oliver has been giving me gifts all year long, in dark and light times. I like to think that she and I would have been friends had we lived close to each other and I was able to control my schoolgirl crush over her. I also like to think we would have gone for long walks along Lake Superior or climbed Sugarloaf Mountain. After our hikes, she would have invited me back to her cabin in the woods, because, of course, that's where Mary Oliver would have lived in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We would have sat on her front porch, even in winter, sipped tea (or bourbon, if it was very cold) , petted each other's dogs, and read each other poems.
Poets understand the need to disconnect. Think nothing of getting up at 3 a.m. to scribble in a journal for a few hours before the world begins to stir like a bear from hibernation. Some mornings, I send a text message to a poet friend, asking her if she wants to watch the sunrise from the roof of the library where I work, and she usually comes. Poets don't mind looking odd or weird or distracted. They can sit for minutes/hours contemplating the difference between "sadness" and "sorrow," "happiness" and "ecstasy." Poets don't need to know all the answers, but they do need really good questions that may, at times, be impossible to answer. Other times, an answer may appear, windy and woolly, a small white wolf, a hard blue stone.
I have poet friends who fit that job description to a tee. A few nights ago, I hosted a reading by one of my poet friends at the library. Lisa just had her first poetry collection published: Mercy Is a Bright Darkness. I've had the privilege of seeing many of the poems in the book in draft form. Because that's what poet friends do: we share, unfold like orchids to display the delicate blooms of our most private lives.
Recently, Lisa and I had lunch by an autumn lake. We walked through a forest gold with leaves, read poems, and laughed together, deep, side-aching laughs. I know that Lisa would have been good friends with Mary Oliver, too. We all share the same poetic DNA. Chase beauty. Find miracles in the slap of beaver tail on a lake's surface, the flash of swallowtail wing in a gully of summer grass.
Listening to Lisa read her poems a few nights ago was like a visit from the Night Traveler. She held up her gifts, cold-nosed and singing like a heart--your heart--in love's green bower. Her poems were, quite simply, a bath of light, as Mary Oliver says.
Saint Marty is still glowing from this bath. This baptism.
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