Red Bird: Poems (5 page)

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,
thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting
whether active or not. Sometimes
it was all but ephemeral, maybe only
an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway people beautiful to me, of which
there are so many. You, and you, and you,
whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe
missed. Love, love, love, it was the
core of my life, from which, of course, comes
the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned
that some of them were men and some were women
and some—now carry my revelation with you—
were trees. Or places. Or music flying above
the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun
which was the first, and the best, the most
loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into
my eyes, every morning. So I imagine
such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its
innocence and hunger to give of itself—I imagine
this is how it began.

Eleven Versions of the Same Poem:

Am I lost?

Am I lost?
    I don’t think so.

Do I know where I am?
    I’m not sure.

Have I ever been happier in my life?
    Never.

Am I lost?
    I am lost.

Do I know where I am?
    I am lost.

Have I ever been more joyful in my life?
    I am lost.

I don’t want to live a small life

I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,
open your hands. I have just come
from the berry fields, the sun

kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might

feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many how small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift

I will ever bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do.
Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.

I am the one

I am the one
who took your hand
when you offered it to me.

I am the pledge of emptiness
that turned around.
Even the trees smiled.

Always I was the bird
that flew off through the branches.
Now

I am the cat
with feathers
under its tongue.

Now comes the long blue cold

Now comes the long blue cold
and what shall I say but that some
bird in the tree of my heart
is singing.

That same heart that only yesterday
was a room shut tight, without dreams.

Isn’t it wonderful—the cold wind and
spring in the heart inexplicable.
Darling girl. Picklock.

So every day

So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,

one of which was you.

If the philosopher is right

If the philosopher is right,
that all we are
and all the earth around us
is only a dream,

even if a bright, long dream—
that everything is nothing
but what sits in the mind,

that the trees, that the red bird
are all in the mind,
and the river, and the sea in storm
are all in the mind,

that nothing exists fierce or soft or apt to be
    truly shaken—
nothing tense, wild, sleepy—nothing
like Yeats’ girl with the yellow hair—
then you too are a dream

which last night and the night before that
    and the years before that
you were not.

There you were, and it was like spring

There you were, and it was like spring—
like the first fair water with the light on it,
    hitting the eyes.
Why are we made the way we are made, that to love
    is to want?
Well, you are gone now, and this morning I have walked out
    to the back shore,
to the ocean which, even if we think we have measured it,
    has no final measure.
Sometimes you can see the great whales there,
    breaching and playing.
Sometimes the swans linger just long enough
    for us to be astonished.
Then they lift their wings, they become again
    a part of the untouchable clouds.

Where are you?

Where are you?
Do you know that the heart has a dungeon?
Bring light! Bring light!

I wish I loved no one

I wish I loved no one,
I said, one long day.

You are a fool then,
said the old cripple
from the poorhouse.

You are a fool then,
said the young woman
tramping the road
with nothing, nothing.

I wish I loved no one,
I said on yet another long day.

You are a fool then,
said a wrinkled face
at the boarding house.
And she laughed.
A pitiful fool!

I will try

I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished,
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and—
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?

What is the greatest gift?

    What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself—the oceans, the meadowlark,
    the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else—something else entirely
    holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
    more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life—courteous, intelligent—
    that I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a soul—your own, no one else’s—
    that I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours
    more than my own.

Someday

Even the oldest of the trees continues its wonderful labor.
Hummingbird lives in one of them.
He’s there for the white blossoms, and the secrecy.
The blossoms could be snow, with a dash of pink.
At first the fruit is small and green and hard.
Everything has dreams, hope, ambition.

If I could I would always live in such shining obedience
where nothing but the wind trims the boughs.
I am sorry for every mistake I have made in my life.
I’m sorry I wasn’t wiser sooner.
I’m sorry I ever spoke of myself as lonely.

Oh, love, lay your hands upon me again.
Some of the fruit ripens and is picked and is delicious.
Some of it falls and the ants are delighted.
Some of it hides under the snow and the famished deer are saved.

Red Bird Explains Himself

“Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed there, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body. Do you understand? for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul. And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”

I thank the editors of the following magazines in which some of the poems have previously appeared, sometimes in slightly different form.

Appalachia:
“From This River, When I Was a Child, I Used to Drink”

Bark:
“Percy (Nine)”

Cape Cod Voice:
“Luke,” “A River Far Away and Long Ago,” “There You Were, and It Was Like Spring”

Five Points:
“Visiting the Graveyard,” “Night Herons,” “Red”

Onearth:
“Straight Talk from Fox,” “Winter and the Nuthatch,” “Showing the Birds”

Orion:
“Boundaries”

Parabola:
“There Is a Place Beyond Ambition,” “Not This, Not That”

Portland Magazine:
“This Day, and Probably Tomorrow Also,” “Of Goodness”

Reflections
(Yale Divinity School): “The Teachers,” “Watching a Documentary about Polar Bears Trying to Survive on the Melting Ice Floes”

Shenandoah:
“Red Bird”

The Southern Review:
“With the Blackest of Inks,” “Invitation,” “The Orchard,” “In the Evening, in the Pinewoods”

Spiritus:
“Night and the River”

Beacon Press
25 Beacon Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
www.beacon.org

Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.

© 2008 by Mary Oliver
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America

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This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oliver, Mary
  Red bird : poems / by Mary Oliver.
  p. cm.
  eISBN: 978-0-8070-9772-4
  I. Title.
  PS3565.L5R43 2008
  811’.54—dc22
  2007035357

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