August 4: "Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches," Anxiety and Worry, "The War in My Head"

Mary Oliver asks . . . 

Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches

by:  Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches

     of other lives--

tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,

      hanging

from the branches of the young locust trees, in early summer,

      feel like?

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides

      with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!

Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over

      the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint

      that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?

Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot

      in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself

      continually?

Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed

      with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?

Well, there is time left--

fields everywhere invite you into them.

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

      from wherever you are, to look for your soul?

Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!

To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is

      the mystery, which is death as well as life, and

       not be afraid!

To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome

       with amazement!

To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine

       god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,

nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the

       present hour,

to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,

to the tiplets of the honeysuckle, that have opened

     in the night.

To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!

☼☼☼☼

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult

than the wakening from a little sleep.

☼☼☼☼

Only last week I went out among the thorns and said

      to the wild roses:

deny me not,

but suffer my devotion.

Then all afternoon, I sat among them.  Maybe

I even heard a curl or two of music, damp and rouge red,

hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.

☼☼☼☼

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,

     caution and prudence?

Fall in!  Fall in!

☼☼☼☼

A woman standing in the weeds.

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next

      is coming with its own heave and grace.

☼☼☼☼

Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,

      upon the immutable.

What more could one ask?

And I would touch the faces of the daisies,

and I would bow down

to think about it.

That was then, which hasn't ended yet.

Now the sun begins to swing down.  Under the peach-light,

I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.

I climb, I backtrack.

I float.

I ramble my way home.

Amazingly, I didn't have to work today.

Yet, I still found myself distracted with anxiety and worry.  Perhaps, I'm that person Oliver addresses when she says, "No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint / that something is missing from your life!"  Put on your jacket, she instructs, and go out into the world.  Become a part of it.  Sit among the thorns and listen to the roses sing.  Become a weed sitting among the weeds.  Touch the faces of the daisies.  Put your foot in the door of death and be amazed.

This struggle is nothing new to me.  As I said last night, I've been feeling acutely overwhelmed by life in the last few days.  That's one of the reasons I took today off from the library.  To let go.  Relax a little.

Yet, the whelm followed me, and here I sit now, treading water and looking for a lighthouse to guide me back to safe harbor.

Now, Oliver's advice for these kinds of feelings is to go outside and become part of the world.  Last night, I led a poetry workshop based on the poems of Wendell Berry.  One of Berry's most famous poems, "The Peace of Wild Things," pretty much offers the same advice:  "I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds."

I tried today.  I really did.  I didn't find the wood drake or great heron.  Or the peace of wild things.

Saint Marty did, however, write a poem about peace.  Maybe that was the lighthouse he was looking for  today . . .

The War in My Head

by:  Martin Achatz

When I find myself at my desk

weeping for the war in my head,

I reach for my pen, my notebook,

squeeze all my wild thoughts out,

fill pages and pages until

I find armistice.  Today, it was

a piece of chocolate 

melting on my tongue, 

quieting all the bombs

of the world.

August 3: "From the Book of Time," My Poem, Chipmunks and Blue Jays

Mary Oliver gets distracted by spring . . . 

From the Book of Time

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

I rose this morning early as usual, and went to my desk.

But it's spring,

and the thrush is in the woods, 

somewhere in the twirled branches, and he is singing.

And so, now, I am standing by the open door.

And now I am stepping down onto the grass.

I am touching a few leaves.

I am noticing the way the yellow butterflies

move together, in a twinkling cloud, over the field.

And I am thinking:  maybe just looking and listening

is the real work.

Maybe the world, without us,

is the real poem.

2.

For how many years have you gone through the house

     shutting the windows,

while the rain was still five miles away

and veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the north

away from you

and you did not even know enough

to be sorry, 

you were glad

those silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple,

were sweeping on, elsewhere,

violent and electric and uncontrollable--

and will you find yourself, o lonely leaf, and will you

dash finally, frantically,

to the windows and haul them open and lean out

to the dark, silvered sky, to everything

that is beyond capture, shouting

I'm here, I'm here!  Now, now, now, now, now.

3.

I dreamed

I was traveling

from one country

to another

jogging

on the back

of a white horse

whose hooves

were the music

of dust and gravel

whose halter

was made of the leafy braids

of flowers,

whose name

was Earth.

And it never

grew tired

though the sun

went down

like a thousand roses

and the stars

put their white faces

in front of the black branches

above us

and then

there was nothing around us

but water

and the white horse

turned suddenly 

like a bolt of white cloth

opening

under the cloth-cutter's deft hands

and became a swan.

Its red tongue

flickered out

as it perceived

my great surprise

my huge and unruly pleasure

my almost unmanageable relief.

4.

"'Whoever shall be guided so far toward the mysteries of love, by contemplating beautiful things rightly in due order, is approaching the last grade.  Suddenly he will behold a beauty marvelous in its nature,

that very Beauty, Socrates, for the sake of which all the earlier hardships had been borne:  in the first place, everlasting, and never being born nor perishing, neither increasing nor diminishing, secondly, not beautiful here and ugly there, not beautiful now and ugly then, not beautiful in one direction and ugly in another direction, not beautiful in one place and ugly in another place.  Again, this beauty will not show itself like a face or hands or any bodily thing at all, nor as a discourse or a science, nor indeed as residing in anything, as in a living creature or in earth or heaven or anything else, but being by itself with itself always in simplicity; while all the beautiful things elsewhere partake of this beauty in such a manner, that when they are born and perish it becomes neither less nor more and nothing at all happens to it . . . '"

5.

What secrets fly out of the earth

when I push the shovel-edge,

when I heave the dirt open?

And if there are no secrets

what is that smell that sweetness rising?

What is my name,

o what is my name

that I may offer it back

to the beautiful world?

Have I walked 

long enough

where the sea breaks raspingly

all day and all night upon the pale sand?

Have I admired sufficiently the little hurricane

of the humming bird?

the heavy

thumb

of the blackberry?

the falling star?

6.

Count the roses, red and fluttering.

Count the roses, wrinkled and salt.

Each with its yellow lint at the center.

Each with its honey pooled and ready.

Do you have a question that can't be answered?

Do the stars frighten you by their heaviness

     and their endless number?

Does it bother you, that mercy is so difficult to 

     understand?

For some souls it's easy; they lie down on the sand

     and are soon asleep.

For others, the mind shivers in its glacial palace,

     and won't come.

Yes, the mind takes a long time, is otherwise occupied

than by happiness, and deep breathing.

Now, in the distance, some bird is singing.

And now I have gathered six or seven deep red,

     half-opened cups of petals between my hands,

and now I have put my face against them

and now I am moving my face back and forth, slowly,

     against them.

The body is not much more than two feet and a tongue.

Come to me, says the blue sky, and say the word.

And finally even the mind comes running, like a wild thing,

     and lies down in the sand.

Eternity is not later, or in any unfindable place.

Roses, roses, roses, roses.

7.

Even now

I remember something

the way a flower

in a jar of water

remembers its life

in the perfect garden

the way a flower

in a jar of water

remembers its life

as a closed seed

the way a flower in a jar of water

steadies itself

remembering itself

long ago

the plunging roots

the gravel the rain

the glossy stem

the wings of the leaves

the swords of the leaves

rising and clashing

for the rose of the sun

the salt of the stars

the crown of the wind

the beds of the clouds

the blue dream

the unbreakable circle.

My puppy loves to stand guard.  One of her favorite perches in the house is by the living room window where she presses her nose against the glass and won't be distracted.  She notices everything--the mailman, chipmunks and blue jays, coming rain or snow, rabbits nosing through clover.  Her body literally shakes with the effort of rapt attention.

My puppy is the exact opposite of Oliver in this poem.  The poet abandons her desk and pen, gets distracted.  Instead of writing a draft of a poem, she is out her open door, stepping into the dewy grass.  Observing.  Absorbing.  And she comes to a realization:  "Maybe the world, without us, / is the real poem."  Maybe her real work as a poet is not scribbling in a notebook.  Maybe it's throwing open the windows of her house to everything--plum-colored clouds and lonely leaves and the hurricane of the hummingbird and roses, roses, roses.

A poet notices.  Records.  Allows herself to be distracted by the beauty (or ugliness) in front of her eyes.  The wide, wide world is the poem.  Anything that Oliver writes (or that I write) is just a meager attempt to plagiarize what the world has already written.

That means that my puppy is reading the poem of the world when she is at her window station.  She gets it.  Each leaf that moves, each cloud scudding by, each blade of grass is just another line in the unbreakable circle.

Maybe that's why Walt Whitman was constantly changing Leaves of Grass, revising and eliminating, expanding and shrinking.  He was simply looking out his window and telling us what he saw.

Maybe Saint Marty needs to spend more time barking at the squirrels.

August 2: "Flare," Whelm, a Little Unhinged

Mary Oliver visits her great-grandfather's farm . . .

Flare

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

Welcome to the silly, comforting poem.

It is not the sunrise,

which is a red rinse,

which is flaring all over the eastern sky;

it is not the rain falling out of the purse of God;

it is not the blue helmet of the sky afterward,

or the trees, or the beetle burrowing into the earth;

it is not the mockingbird who, in his own cadence,

will go on sizzling and clapping

from the branches of the catalpa that are thick with blossoms,

     that are billowing and shining,

          that are shaking in the wind.

2.

     You still recall, sometimes, the old barn on your great-grandfather's farm, a place you visited once, and went into, all alone, while the grownups sat and talked in the house.

It was empty, or almost.  Wisps of hay covered the floor, and some wasps sang at the windows, and maybe there was a strange fluttering bird high above, disturbed, hoo-ing a little and staring down from a messy ledge with wild, binocular eyes.

Mostly, though, it smelled of milk, and the patience of animals, the give-offs of the body were still in the air, a vague ammonia, not unpleasant.

Mostly, though, it was restful and secret, the roof high up and arched, the boards unpainted and plain.

You could have stayed there forever, a small child in a corner, on the last raft of hay, dazzled by so much space that seemed empty, but wasn't.

Then--you still remember--you felt the rap of hunger--it was noon--and you turned from that twilight dream and hurried back to the house, where the table was set, where an uncle patted you on the shoulder for welcome, and there was your place at the table.

3.

Nothing lasts.

There is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is,

now.

I stood there once, on the green grass, scattering flowers.

4.

Nothing is so delicate or so finely hinged as the wings

of the green moth

against the lantern

against the heat

against the beak of the crow

in the early morning.

Yet the moth has trim, and feistiness, and not a drop

     of self-pity.

Not in this world.

5.

My mother

was the blue wisteria,

my mother

was the mossy stream out behind the house,

my mother, alas, alas,

did not always love her life,

heavier than iron it was

as she carried it in her arms, from room to room,

oh, unforgettable!

I bury her

in a box

in the earth

and turn away.

My father

was a demon of frustrated dreams,

was a breaker of trust,

was a poor, thin boy with bad luck.

He followed God, there being no one else

he could talk to,

he swaggered before God, there being on one else

who would listen.

Listen,

this was his life. 

I bury it in the earth.

I sweep the closets.

I leave the house.

6.

I mention them now

I will not mention them again.

It is not lack of love

nor lack of sorrow.

but the iron thing they carried, I will not carry.

I give them--one, two, three, four--the kiss of courtesy,

     of sweet thanks,

of anger, of good luck in the deep earth.

May they sleep well.  May they soften.

But I will not give them the kiss of complicity.

I will not give them the responsibility for my life.

7.

Did you know that the ant has a tongue

with which to gather in all that it can

of sweetness?

Did you know that?

8.

The poem is not the world.

It isn't even the first page of the world.

But the poem wants to flower, like a flower.

It knows that much.

It wants to open itself,

like the door of a little temple,

so that you might step inside and be cooled and refreshed,

and less yourself than part of everything.

9.

The voice of the child crying out of the mouth of the

     grown woman

is a misery and a disappointment.

The voice of the child howling out of the tall, bearded,

     muscular man

is a misery, and a terror.

10.

Therefore, tell me:

what will engage you?

What will open the dark fields of your mind,

     like a lover

          at first touching?

11.

Anyway,

there was no barn.

No child in the barn.

No uncle no table no kitchen.

Only a long lovely field of bobolinks.

12.

When loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider

the orderliness of the world.  Notice

something you have never noticed before,

like the tambourine sound of the snow-cricket

whose pale green body is no longer than your thumb.

Stare hard at the hummingbird, in the summer rain,

shaking the water-sparks from its wings

Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.

Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also,

     like the diligent leaves.

A lifetime isn't long enough for the beauty of the world

and the responsibilities of your life.

Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.

Be good and untidy in your exuberance.

In the glare of your mind, be modest.

And beholden to what is tactile, and thrilling.

Like with the beetle, and the wind.

This is the dark bread of the poem.

This is the dark and nourishing bread of the poem.

Welcome to this silly, comforting blog post.

It was a really long day for me, full of ennui and a little despair.  I worked all day in my library office, answering emails, stomping out fires, and trying not to succumb to a whelm of free-floating hopelessness.

Nothing prompted this state of mind/spirit.  It just showed up without knocking.  I'm hoping it's not the return of the depression that I've been struggling with for the past year or so.  In her poem, Oliver advises that, when "loneliness comes stalking, go into the fields, consider / the orderliness of the world.  Notice / something you have never noticed before . . ."  Not a bad idea.  I'm not sure if going into the fields to escape loneliness isn't simply avoidance, which my therapist would probably discourage as a coping technique.

However, after sitting at my desk, weeping for a good portion of the day, I really needed to go into the fields, as Oliver suggests.  I needed distraction, and I found it in an outdoor concert I hosted at the library.  The Charlie Millard band.  The music didn't completely chase away the loneliness, as I became a little unhinged during a couple songs.  For the most part, though, I held it together.

And it was a blessing.  Grace.

That is the dark bread of this blog post.

The dark and nourishing bread of Saint Marty's blog post.  .

August 1: "One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins on a Summer Day," Long Day, In the World

Mary Oliver admires . . . 

One Hundred White-Sided Dolphins

on a Summer Day

by:  Mary Oliver

1.

Fat,

black, slick,

galloping in the pitch

of the waves in the pearly

fields of the sea,

they leap toward us,

they rise, sparkling, and vanish, and rise sparkling,

they breathe little clouds of mist, they lift perpetual smiles,

they slap their tails on the waves, grandmothers and grandfathers

enjoying the old jokes,

they circle around us,

they swim with us--

2.

a hundred white-sided dolphins

on a summer day,

each one, as God himself

could not appear more acceptable

a hundred times,

in a body blue and black threading through

the sea foam,

and lifting himself up from the opened

tents of the waves on his fishtail,

to look

with the moon of his eye

into my heart,

3.

and find there

pure, sudden, steep, sharp, painful

gratitude

that falls--

I don't know--either

unbearable tons

or the pale, bearable hand

of salvation

on my neck,

lifting me

from the boat's plain plank seat

into the world's

4.

unspeakable kindness.

It is my sixty-third summer on earth

and, for a moment, I have almost vanished

into the body of the dolphin

into the moon-eye of God,

into the white fan that lies at the bottom of the sea

with everything

that ever was, or ever will be,

supple, wild, rising on flank or fishtail--

singing or whistling or breathing damply through blowhole

at top of head.  Then, in our little boat, the dolphins suddenly gone,

we sailed on through the brisk, cheerful day.

You know, sometimes Mary says it all and better than I ever could.  This is one of those times.

After a very long day that started at 4 .m., I am at the end of my mind's capacity to form coherent thought.  Like Oliver in the poem, I was just riding in my little boat tonight, without the energy even to fall asleep.  While my wife drove us home, I was in the world but, at the same time, not in it.  Just present.

And then there was the sun, blazing gold above the trees.  When Oliver sees the one hundred white-sided dolphins in her sixty-third summer, she vanishes, becomes part of them, leaping and slapping the water.  Tonight, after over five decades of summers, I simmered in that gilded evening sun.  I didn't quite vanish, but I put my head back on the headrest and let myself detach.  Float.

Another Mary Oliver moment for Saint Marty.