Mary Oliver, the celebrated poet, died recently on January 17, 2019. Since that day, her words have been running through my mind. She’s famous for so many essential lines.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? From The Summer Day.
You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. From Wild Geese.
Those famous lines aren’t what has captured my imagination, what has wormed it’s way into my head. Instead, I’m stuck on the routine line that I’d imagine most people pass over in Wild Geese.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
So simple, yet so fraught. On my first reading years ago, the idea was infinitely reassuring. I wrote it in my notes. Remember… The sun rises and sets. The geese fly in formation. The pregnant woman who lives downstairs nears her due date. A new season comes. The baby is born. The rhythm is reassuring, and we know that tomorrow is a new day. We can always begin anew.
Every morning the world is created. From Morning Poem.
Except, In 2019, when concern for the natural world and our place in it is so challenging, that reassuring phrase borders on haunting. The human world goes on without change, virtually without notice of the harm we’re causing day in and day out.
The Monarch butterfly is rapidly nearing extinction. The Pacific kelp forests off the coast of Northern California have been decimated by an abundance of sea urchin. Greenhouse gas emissions in the US are at all time highs. Students are striking from school — clamoring for action, for fixes, for a future.
Meanwhile the world goes on?
We eat and sleep and make love, use ungodly amounts of plastic, overheat our homes and take unnecessarily hot showers. We load and unload the dishwasher. Planes take off and land. The baby drinks the last of the milk, and we need more groceries for the week ahead.
Winter in San Francisco is rainy. This year especially. As incredible winds rattled our house overnight, in yet more extreme weather, I’m reminded of the winds of Patagonia, requiring two hands on the steering wheel at all times, a constant reminder of the proximity of wildness right outside my window. A very Mary Oliver reminder.
There is work to be done. There is life to lead in the midst of so much brokenness. There is great beauty in the everyday details.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
All while the sun rises and my son sleeps, on his stomach, bottom held high in the air, like a mountain peak. Rising and falling with each breath.
