Monday, January 3, 2011

Mary Oliver

White Heron Rises Over Blackwater
Mary Oliver

I wonder what it is that I will accomplish today
If anything can be called that marvelous word.

It won't be
My kind of work, which is only putting words on a page,
The pencil
Haltingly calling up
The light of the world,
Yet nothing appearing on paper half as bright
As the mockingbird's verbal hilarity
In the still unleafed shrub in the churchyard-
Or the white heron rising over the swamp and the darkness,
His yellow eyes and broad wings wearing
The light of the world in the light of the world-
Ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

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