Pink Moon--The Pond
by: Mary Oliver
You think it will never happen again.
Then, one night in April,
the tribes wake trilling.
You walk down to the shore.
Your coming stills them,
but little by little the silence lifts
until song is everywhere
and your soul rises from your bones
and strikes out over the water.
It is a crazy thing to do--
for no one can live like that,
floating around in the darkness
over the gauzy water.
Left on the shore your bones
keep shouting come back!
But your soul won't listen;
in the distance it is unfolding
like a pair of wings, it is sparking
like hot wires. So,
like a good friend,
you decide to follow.
You step off the shore
and plummet to your knees--
you slog forward to your thighs
and sink to your cheekbones--
and now you are caught
by the cold chains of the water--
you are vanishing while around you
the frogs continue to sing, driving
their music upward through your own throat,
not even noticing
you are something else.
And that's when it happens--
you see everything
through their eyes,
their joy, their necessity,
you wear their webbed fingers;
your throat swells.
And that's when you know
you will live whether you will or not,
one way or another,
because everything is everything else,
one long muscle.
It's no more mysterious than that.
So you relax, you don't fight it anymore,
the darkness coming down
called water,
called spring,
called the green leaf, called
a woman's body
as it turns into mud and leaves,
as it beats in its cage of water,
as it turns like a lonely spindle
in the moonlight, as it says
yes.
I have experienced what Oliver is writing about. That moment, after a long season of ice and snow and cold, when you step outside and hear the tribes trilling. For Oliver, it happens in April. For me, smack dab in the center of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, that moment usually comes sometime in May. The very air is transformed into song by the choirs of frogs, and I know that everything is becoming everything else. And my soul crawls out of the bones of my body and becomes the air and music and frogs and water and stars.
This happens at the cusps of every season--winter into spring into summer into autumn into winter again. There is that one moment when your soul knows that everything is becoming everything else. It's happening right now. In the mornings, the grass flashes with frost. I took my puppy for a walk this morning, and the puddles on the sides of the street were white with rime. Night comes earlier and earlier, and the heavens are like crystal--fragile, sparkling with moon and starlight.
Usually, long before this begins to happen, I'm already preparing for the moment. In fact, you might say that I prepare for this moment all year. It's not uncommon for me to be listening to Christmas music in August (or May or June or July). Many a year, I've decorated my house for yuletide before I've even carved the pumpkins. And, if you stop by my home for a visit in March, you may be greeted by the soft glow of electric sex from the leg lamp in my living room. Yes, I'm that annoying neighbor who has a Christmas tree still glowing on his front porch on Easter Sunday.
This year, however, the light has come late. I could say I've been too busy or too tired. That I haven't had a single moment to celebrate the shift of seasons. However, that would be a lie.
The truth is this: darkness has more power over my existence than light right now. As the days become shorter and shorter, I haven't reached for the light switch. Instead, I've been wallowing in the night like some feral nocturnal pig. There's a line from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol: "Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it."
I don't necessarily like the black mood that has descended on me, but I also find it difficult in my current state of mind to go through the usual holiday rituals. Thus, until today, the boxes of decorations in my garage and attic have remained unopened as other houses up and down my street have been transformed into Clark Griswold fantasies.
That changed today. While my wife was at work and my son at a friend's house, I went about the work of decking my halls: hauling out Rubbermaid totes of lights and garlands and ornaments and manger and trees. I streamed one of my favorite holiday films, The Man Who Invented Christmas, and I assembled and lit our tree. My wife and daughter finished the job tonight.
As I type the last few sentences of this post, my living room is simmering with light. An angel is watching over me from the top of the tree, and I can feel my soul stirring a little in my bones. Turning over like a bear from hibernation toward the scent of spring.
And Saint Marty says yes.
