Poetry in Ordinary Time: Mary Oliver

Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, Mary Oliver, died last month at the age of 83.  Her work is known for its affinity with the natural world, which reflects her own.  Though not a practitioner of any particular faith, many of her poems are introspective, prayer-like and often reference God, specifically as found in creation.

Ash Wednesday is March 6th this year, and thereafter we move into the Season of Lent.  For now, however, we are again in Ordinary Time.  For the next four weeks, offered here will be the sections of her poem "At the River Clarion", for your reading and reflection.  The source is her final book, Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Penguin Press, New York, 2017.

Photo: a stretch of the Clarion River 
that runs through Cook Forest Park.
Photographer: Zack (Zach) Zrudisin

At the River Clarion

1.

I don't know who God is exactly.
But I'll tell you this.
I was sitting in the river named Clarion, on a
     water splashed stone
and all afternoon I listened to the voices
     of the river talking.
Whenever the water struck the stone it had
     something to say,
and the water itself, and even the mosses trailing
     under the water.
And slowly, very slowly, it became clear to me
     what they were saying.
Said the river: I am part of holiness.
And I too, said the stone.  And I too, whispered
     the moss beneath the water.

I'd been to the river before, a few times.
Don't blame the river that nothing happened quickly.
You don't hear such voices in an hour or a day.
You don't hear them at all if selfhood has stuffed your ears.
And it's difficult to hear anything anyway, through
     all the traffic, and ambition.



Section 2 -- next week.  May your intervening days be blessed.