Mary Oliver: Poetry of the Passion

Mary Oliver writes in A Poetry Handbook, one of the finest justifications I know for writing, reading and cherishing poetry.

"Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision, a faith, to use an old fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed."

Fires for the cold, ropes for the lost, bread for the hungry – good metaphors for a sermon at its best too.

Oliver is one of the most attentive nature poets, discovering in the world around, meaning that reflects back on human life – in this poem, ‘the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation’, is a line which, with what follows, takes me deeper into the meaning of Holy Week.

“In Blackwater Woods”

By Mary Oliver

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.