MARY OLIVER

MARY OLIVER

Of all the poets I admire
only one did I envy

How she could take us all on her journey
remind us of the wild beauty of our lives
and the soft animal of our bodies

It is disowned parts of us I know
that we hold too high or low

And yet I wanted to go where she could go

This year in the merry month of May
on a trip in search of other things
a book I didn’t know she’d written
in a town where I didn’t know she lived

I hung five days like her hummingbird
on the green wheel of its wings

Her flowers were my food
her town became my town
her dunes became my dunes

Sip by sip on that Cape Cod shore
I began to envy her less
and love her more

And that pretty green stone
I was taking with me
I threw it back into the sea