I took this while on the Vineyard earlier this month. I liked the dazzling way that the sun silvered the surface of the waves and the sand without penetrating the depths. Looking at the icy water, feeling the inscrutability, the inhospitable heart of the sea, I thought about a life lived at the surface, and how I long for the deepest dive,
Here is my favorite Mary Oliver poem. What I love is that she is never just looking at or even observing. She is the fully embodied witness to the authentic movement of life. She takes us down to the depths and then flings us upward, outward, into breathlessness. Thank you Mary.
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?