2024 Poem - When I am Among the Trees by Mary Oliver

 

When I am Among the Trees

Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

My Mother's Savage Daughter

 

Happy New Year 2021!

 Wow. 

What a year, huh?

Thrilled to have a new one. Wishing blessings and better times for Americans and the world. 

Pandemic?!

What an unexpected time. Living through history right now. Trying to be the kindest person I can be.

What's Normal Anyway?

I'm sorry.

I've been coping with a lot for a really long time. From the outside, my life always looks admirable and enviable.

And it has its great moments, that's for sure. If I couldn't live in the moments, I don't know how I would keep going.

From the inside, my life is often a tough place to be.

The last two decades have been a lot. Lots of challenge and some loss. Lots to adjust to.  The past five years have been particularly demanding, and I've had to put my attention into a lot of different places to keep things going for the people in my life.

Normally, I try to keep a fairly optimistic outlook. I find it helps to focus on the good, to build from what's positive. I've been blessed with a certain resilient optimism that comes to my aid time and time again.

Lately, however, I've been aware of the dark undercurrents as well. I've had to face the fact that I probably live with a subtype of bipolar disorder. A strong but fast moving variation that means I go up and down fast, and I never know when or for how long. It has colored my whole life.

So, yes, I look like a success because when I'm good, I get things done. I work, I interact, I nurture my friendships and family. For hours on most days, I'm able to function well. For other hours, not so much. That's when people don't hear from me and I vanish into the quiet of my efforts alone. But since it's not for weeks at a time, no one has ever noticed.

Except me. Except now. Except ... maybe everybody, or at least most people, have something going on deep inside. Some challenge, some trauma, some not-quite-neurotypical disorder that is pulling at their days. Maybe the excuses that any of us have for our behavior, our actions, our past, our moods are the excuses that many of us have.

I don't really know. I try not to think too much about stuff these days. I don't write much. I just do what I need to do. I don't talk to friends. I don't go out. I work and I get stuff done. And I live for those great moments.

Hey - Kites are pretty beautiful and we would miss them if they weren't there any more

I've been turning it over quite a bit. It's probably true that life moves you on along your side of the river.  But it's equally true that it's nice to have friends, someone to wave to across the rushing water. Knowing that there is activity and settlement on the other bank.

It's lonely without friends. It's lonely without any beautiful kites in the sky that you can at least look at when you need to let your spirit soar a bit. When you need to dip and glide like a bird and have a moment of freedom and just a moment when you imagine a life lived above the river where it isn't the formidable boundary that it is today.

So build a new kite. Put it up into the air. Let its bright colors, its shimmering vibrancy ascend. Make it special, make it yours, a kite that is about you, a kite that shows the best of you, the you of you. A kite that shows where you stand on the ground, and, as such, inspires those both near and far, reaches out to touch the hearts of friend and stranger, and even those in-between. And those on more than one path so that they have the guide of kindness, compassion, loyalty, affection and true intention to accompany them on their journey.

Rivers and Bridges, Part II

Therapy, and more therapy, has been a dominant theme of this summer. Sudden, traumatic events and then the long unfolding of coping and adjusting, coming to terms with self and others.

All of life is this constant negotiation, this silver stream of awareness and adjustment, a peering forward and a turning back to see the landscape one has travelled.

Event past, times long ago, lie like a beautiful village on the other side of a rushing river. The cottage is there, the place you once inhabited with its charming shutters and honeysuckle bowers, the periwinkle roses that grow near the door. A lovely place that cottage. And the people who lived there, you cared for, you thought of as friends. you think of as friends.

Those lovely people, bright, strong, handsome as they continue on about their own lives. On their side of the riverbank, near the cottage where you used to dwell, the place where you rested a while on your travels.

You can glimpse the people, that life. But it is gone to you now. The river is wide, and deep, and fast, and it carries you on to your life on this side. Is there any way to cross that river, to revisit that previous time? If the people are occupied in their daily tasks, and the river is a barrier, if life has moved forward and time has carried on, is there any hope, reason, purpose, good to come of building a bridge, of finding a boat, of sailing a kite to the other shore?

I have no answers for this. I suspect that the river once crossed is not meant to be recrossed. But these are the images that come to my mind today, as I think of the lives of those who have played a role in my life.