One of the most consistent themes in Mary Oliver’s poetry is her reverence to the flow of nature. In many of her poems – her masterpiece Wild Geese a perfect example – she points the reader to how the lives of the natural world around us seem so certain of their purpose. It's actually pretty remarkable to note the many ways she comes up with to convey the exact same idea --- making it sound uniquely refreshing every time. (As always: it's the medium, not the message.)
She constantly observes the creatures who have "a conscience that never blinks" (With The Blackest Of Inks) and an "infallible sense of what their lives are meant to be" (The Other Kingdoms). She listens quietly to the obedience of nature, writing in the first verse of When The Roses Speak, I Pay Attention: "As long as we are able to be extravagant we will be hugely and damply extravagant. Then we will drop foil by foil to the ground. This is our unalterable task, and we do it joyfully."
Similarly in the sixth stanza of At The River Clarion, she writes:
Along its shores were, may I say, very intense
cardinal flowers.
And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them,
for heaven's sakes ---
the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,
they are so happily obedient.
While I sit here in a house filled with books,
ideas, doubts, hesitations.
There are so many brilliant poems of hers on this theme, and the one that I turn to most often is I Go Down To The Shore. With her signature simplicity, she mirrors the way that our anxious, existential questions are so relentless, and urges us instead toward a more humble approach to being – one that ultimately surrenders to our small place in the grand scheme of things.
Just like the waves rolling in and out, we do our “work” everyday simply by being – and, as Oliver always reminds, by paying attention.
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I Go Down To The Shore by Mary Oliver
I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall --- what should I do? And the sea says in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.
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