If you go for oysters and I go for ersters

Biology by Stephen O'Connor from Poetry (July/August 2008)

Is this happiness or oyster-life?

This flexing of muscular torso-foot

joy’s wonder? This sifting of silt

from food in the shifting chill-dark?

If, in my mind, there is a life of flight

in the light beyond the over-swirl,

must I unfix my lips from this rock

to be right? Or is my apex to worry

quartz against my shell?

 

 

The maple tree pollen has my head too muddled and stuffy to think coherently this morning.  So instead of any insights or reflections, I'll simply offer this little gem of a poem and leave you to ruminate on the questions the poet raises on your own.  (Hint:  I think the answer to all his questions is YES.)

 

 

 

 

Mary Oliver Monday - Deep Summer

DEEP SUMMER
by Mary Oliver from Evidence (Beacon Press)

The mockingbird
opens his throat
among the thorns
for his own reasons

but doesn't mind
if we pause
to listen
and learn something

for ourselves;
he doesn't stop,
he nods
his gray head

with the frightfully bright eyes,
he flirts
his supple tail,
he says:

listen, if you would listen.
There's no end
to good talk,
to passion songs,

to the melodies
that say
this branch,
this tree is mine,

to the wholesome
happiness
of being alive
on a patch

of this green earth
in the deep
pleasures of summer.
What a bird!

Your clocks, he says plainly,
which are always ticking,
do not have to be listened to.
The spirit of his every word.

I realize that it isn't even shallow summer much less deep summer yet, although the rising red on the thermometer might lead those of us in the DC area to believe otherwise.  An afternoon in the mid-high 80s means my plans for afternoon gardening will be modified by the word "sweltering."  I can already imagine the dusty earth sticking to sunscreen and sweat as I toil to get my herb garden replenished and my moon garden reclaimed from the neighbor's ivy that is choking the few plants that the deer didn't eat this winter.

Mondays are meant to be my writing day and a bit of writing might happen in between taking my parents to doctors' appointments, grocery shopping, and gardening.  A few weeks ago if I hadn't been able to stick to my "work" schedule -- Writing Monday, Cathedral Tuesday, Anam Cara Wednesday, Cleaning and Errands Thursday, Reading and more Writing Friday-- I would move through my week feeling a frenetic sort of off-kilter, like a novice lumberjack in a logrolling competition. 

Lately, I've come to realize that the clock and calendar don't necessarily have to be listened to.  Instead, I listen to what I need, and I try to listen to what those around me need (although I still need to work on this). 

So instead of feeling like I'm trying to stay upright on the log, I feel more like this . . .

Surrendering my need to control allows me to sink into being rather than doing and bask in the moment.

Sometimes

SOMETIMES

by Sheenagh Pugh from Selected Poems (Seren)

Sometimes things don't go, after all,

from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,

elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go

amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.


This poem by Sheenagh Pugh has always seemed to me a good pairing with yesterday's poem by Jane Kenyon.  I envision the two poems as sitting on either side of a teeter-totter.  Kenyon reminds us that the good things in our lives we take for granted could be otherwise, while Sheenagh Pugh reminds us that things can go better than expected . . . sometimes.  Otherwise, sometimes, otherwise, sometimes.  Up and down, just like life.

So what is the lesson that speaks to you today? The otherwise or the sometimes?