For Mary Oliver

(May 2022. Written on my last day at the best boondocking spot I’ve ever found, in an old sequoia grove with a stream. I had spent the entire previous few days in silence in nature. This poem contains many references to Mary Oliver’s poetry. For those who don’t know Mary, she was America’s greatest nature poet, who combined Emersonian threads with intellectual Christian themes in order to create a simple, beautiful kind of poetry as prayer, a poetry of witness. She died in 2019. Her selected poems, ‘Devotions,’ is one of my most prized books. This poem is dedicated to Mary.)

For Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver, the body, is dead,
dead as soil below bootsoles growing grass,
dead as ashes in water dancing with waves,
dead as the spirit undressing from one weight to another.

But Mary Oliver, the poet, the voice implied by the poetry,
oh how very alive she is today! I feel her presence
as real as the press of this log on my hips
as I sit on the lone shoulder of this small giant.

Did you really think one who scattered so many seeds
could live and die in only one place?

Oh, make the folds of this mind fallow and fertile,
oh God of butterflies. Like the little blue one,
here and there now fluttering
around the stream and I, a tiny thing
thinner than a penstroke and lighter
than a thought, blue worth noticing
in the green brown orange world of the Sierras,
this inexplicable blue butterfly who’s tiny flutterings by
are endless prayers for more air, answered.

I am paying attention, Mary,
And I know you’re proud of me.
I heard you saying so when I woke early this morning
naturally, early for me at least—
I am learning to listen to light.

And how you loved my day yesterday!
I spent all day sitting and walking
through the old sequoia grove up the road.
I was silent and listened all day,
and when I finally spoke to a squirrel
how strange my voice sounded!

All day the sequoias and their surroundings
shared wonderful thoughts with me, their voices
descending like red bark shavings
slowly in the thick air.
But I wrote nothing down, added nothing
to my Sequoias Speak poem, though they spoke—
I simply did not translate.
I merely listened to the music of the language,
like listening to Spanish poetry at open mic night.
Sharing this speech with my tribe is important, no doubt,
but if I was writing I would not be listening,
and if all my listening were only for extraction
then I would not be acting like a very good friend,
and the sequoias may cease speaking to me.
No, yesterday was for that delightful unproductiveness
which all productivity depends on.

As I wrote this, I stood from my log to walk to a shadier spot.
My movement startled, and from behind the creek bushes
rose the largest bird I’ve ever seen up close,
a massive blue and white heron.
It tilted its weight into elegance, forward
flapping slaps through the air up
the creek, between the sequoias.
It was like watching the rock roll from the tomb.

Flabbergasted with gratitude I walked quietly to the sequoia,
and I could see the big bird resettled upstream.
I slipped off my shoes and crept quietly along the rocks,
the water, the long grasses of the riparian shore.
I stopped a safe distance away so as not to startle it.
I stared as we stare at all things precious and temporary—
with eyes wide, with the grip of ghostly hands
slowing time against the tide. It stood still,
a slender and strong statue of the king in his kingdom.

He was directly under the tilted flat cut face
of the monarch sequoia stump overturned
edging out a shadow over the stream.
The sequoia who’s stump it was must have been
as old as Christ, or at least Mohammad,
for its base is larger than that of the 1500 year old
sequoia standing just downstream,
the son whom I love.

Yesterday I explored behind the stump—
the exposed roots flared in the air twisted
and curled organically like petrified flames.
And under the lip of the smooth-cut stump
now black with ash and age and decay,
the uprightly held curve of this bird’s noble neck,
the god of this stream standing tall in the temple
(and the temple has always been outside.)

The god breaks the stasis,
diving its killer swanlike neck into the water
a lump of fishy something sliding clean down its curves.
The great bird lifts its long legs, and steps
onto the most prominent rock with its wide feet
dominant like the grip of a predator.
It stands there, and arches its neck pridefully,
as if it knows I am watching from downstream,
as if it knows it is being witnessed in its element
as the master of this domain,
the apex of the stream.

The bird god breaks the moment and begins
to slowly saunter upstream, each massive step
a declaration of primal right.
I have stayed still to preserve the moment. Now
I begin creeping forward to preserve the moment
as it slips away.
But of course these things cannot be held or chased—
I round a corner, catch a final glimpse of the god,
who, sensing my encroachment, or perhaps a lack of fish,
leaps out of the water with mighty flaps,
and is gone.

And Mary, would you believe that as I was writing this
I was interrupted by a couple, hikers,
the first humans I’ve seen in days,
startling me like I startled the bird,
and their names were Dawn and Walt Dickinson?

And would you believe, alone again now,
that swarms of thousands of ladybugs are rising
in the sunlight from somewhere upstream,
ladybugs opening their bodies to flow with the wind,
flying over my head towards somewhere downstream,
ladybugs from a seemingly infinite source
emerging endlessly to glint orange in the light
in front of the thousand year old sequoias,
ladybugs bumping into my cheeks and landing in my hair
and crawling, red and real, here on this notebook page?

Of course you would believe,
even if you weren’t seeing it through my eyes now.
You have the faith of all saints of nature,
the faith that all I need do to witness the unbelievable
is to believe.

All I must do is sit here by the water’s flowing,
and wait with open eyes,
and the world will come humbly
with wonders for me to witness.

The ladybugs flow around me like the stream around rocks.
I am still, and still amazed.

I know my holy work is to glorify what I see,
as the sun glorifies the ladybugs,
as the sequoia glorifies the wind.

I am here to give ladybugs a home in my hair,
for the beautiful world loves to be seen.

To marvel at marvels is marvelous.
No work is more important.
I wander, I wonder, I witness—
Mysteries, yes!

We smile, and bow our heads.