Mary Oliver once asked her dog, Percy, how should I live my life? Here is the response:
Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.
Oliver passed away this week at the age of 83. Often, I heard her described as the poet who made a person like poetry, even though they had no idea they liked poetry. This was the case for me as well. She was also the poet who reminded me that I could fall in love with the sound of wild geese and grasshoppers and dying leaves. I think she saved many moments in people’s lives this way, by keeping them from going unnoticed.
Poetry, for me, is just words that play around some kind of eternal truth, words that test language. If a poem is helpful, it might simultaneously point to the way language is both stunning and utterly flawed. A poem perhaps draws our attention away from the tangle of our thoughts so that we might realize it was our own effort that got us all knotted up in the first place.
Oliver was an advocate for paying attention. I have attempted to be an advocate too, though I only write about things I seem to know little of. Attention is the doorway to reciprocity, how love unfolds, the key to understanding interconnection and the impermanence of all things. Yet, it can be rare. What are we paying attention to? And, what is in control of my attention? I have been asking myself these questions a lot lately.
Giving attention is not just for moments, but accumulates to sum up our entire life. Rather than in conversation with her dog, this time Oliver opens up the conversation in her poem, The Summer Day, and asks
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?