Poetry in Ordinary Time: Mary Oliver - Part 4

This is the last of four parts -- poetry for your reflection, written by Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, Mary Oliver, who died in January at age 83.  Today's reflection consists of the fifth, sixth and seventh sections of her seven-section poem, At the River Clarion.*

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

At the River Clarion

5.

My dog Luke lies in a grave in the forest,

     she is given back.

But the river Clarion still flows

     from wherever it comes from

          to where it has been told to go.

I pray for the desperate earth.

I pray for the desperate world.

I do the little each person can do, it isn't much.

Sometimes the river murmurs, sometimes it raves.

6.

Along its shores were, may I say, very intense

     cardinal flowers.

And trees, and birds that have wings to uphold them,

     for heaven's sakes -- 

the lucky ones: they have such deep natures,

     they are so happily obedient.

While I sit here in a house filled with books,

     ideas, doubts, hesitations.

7.

And still, pressed deep into my mind, the river

     keeps coming, touching me, passing by on its

          long journey, its pale, infallible voice

               singing.

*From Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, Penguin Press, New York, 2017.

To read the previous 3 sections, check these links: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.