Creatures

I've had a long love affair with Mary Oliver, the poet extraordinaire. At yoga on Monday, someone had left a copy of her book in our yoga room, and our glorious teacher read us Wild Geese at the end of class. What a message to the world that one is. Yesterday I read one of her poems that had new meaning to me because of my experiences on the beaches of Oregon last summer.

Here's the poem from her book Dream Work....
Starfish

In the sea rocks,
in the stone pockets
under the tide’s lip,
in water dense as blindness

they slid
like sponges,
like too many thumbs.
I knew this, and what I wanted

was to draw my hands back
from the water – what I wanted
was to be willing
to be afraid.

But I stayed there,
I crouched on the stone wall
while the sea poured its harsh song
through the sluices,

while I waited for the gritty lightning
of their touch, while I stared
down through the tide’s leaving
where sometimes I could see them –

their stubborn flesh
lounging on my knuckles.
What good does it do
to lie all day in the sun

loving what is easy?
It never grew easy,
but at last I grew peaceful:
all summer

my fear diminished
as they bloomed through the water
like flowers, like flecks
of an uncertain dream,

while I lay on the rocks, reaching
into the darkness, learning
little by little to love
our only world.



I spent several afternoons last July walking along the Oregon beaches where starfish flourish. The first one we found lying on the wet sand was missing two legs and Abbey assured me that if I threw it back in the sea it had a chance to grow the missing legs. I walked out into the water and threw it as far as I could. I'd never held a living starfish before. My grandchildren hadn't either, and we were in awe at the glory of such a creature.

Further up the coast we explored mussel beds where different colored starfish nestled in the tide pools and shallow water along with anemones and other exotic life. We never had the patience to sit and let them crawl on our hands, but if I had remembered my poetry, I could have made the effort, cold have found the patience. As it was, such a thing was not even a possibility.

And there's the rub--if I had remembered my poetry I would have known....how many things I've learned from that beautiful condensed language. Once a nun told me that when she taught poetry to her students, she would use the metaphor of poetry as condensed orange juice. She thought the intense flavor of frozen juice would let her students see the depth and importance of poetry, that even though it was shorter than prose it was very powerful. I've used that metaphor in my own classrooms since.

There's an irony in poetry--this thing that seems to be dependent upon beauty, whose purpose could be considered beauty is stronger that the words we use to do our daily work. Poetry does explore our feelings and emotions and what is memorable through imagery. However, underneath the imagery is the strength of the core of our lives. We are who we are, and poetry speaks to that which lies under the surface.

Mary is using starfish to tell us about patience, about taking chances, about knowing our world and valuing all creatures and the experiences we have. It's a lesson I'm learning over and over. Be patient with what is--don't try to change everything. Have patience and trust that in the end, things will work out. That's a step into living without so much fear. We are assailed by fear every day--an alert status for terrorism, a weather warning, an outbreak of a terrible disease, financial crises, bankruptcies. The list goes on and we do too. However, we aren't supposed to live in fear. Fear keeps us from trying what is difficult. "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." (2Timothy 1:7)

I love Mary's line, "What good does it do to lie all day in the sun loving what is easy?" I think I've spent a large portion of my life envying those who seem to be lying in the sun and doing what is easy. My hope for myself today and for the next little while is that I not be content with what is easy, that I might try to do that which is hard. I have to realize that while hard things will never be easy, they can be easier, and that I can be peaceful with the effort. Don't we all want peace for ourselves and our souls. There's a lesson for us all in Wendell Berry's lovely poem.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

— Wendell Berry


May we love this wonderful world. May we learn lessons from the wild things who "do not tax their lives with forethought of grief." Blessings to all.