The Ponds
Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them—
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided—
and that one wears an orange blight—
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away—
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled—
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing—
that the light is everything—that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.
Notes
There is something almost childlike in the way Mary Oliver approaches the world, as though even the most familiar landscape deserves to be encountered for the first time. In The Ponds, she observes the water lilies, their beauty, and the quiet persistence of life around them. Yet beneath this attention lies an awareness of how briefly we belong to the world we admire. To look closely at something is also to recognize its independence from us. The world continues beyond our desires and the meanings we place upon it, and perhaps wonder begins when we allow ourselves to be changed by what we see. For November’s The Mask, Oliver offers a gentler reflection on the selves we inherit and inhabit. Beneath the identities shaped by expectation and habit, there remains a capacity for astonishment. Perhaps the moments in which we feel most ourselves are those when we briefly forget the person we are supposed to be. #MaryOliver #AmericanPoetry #NaturePoetry #Existentialism #ThePonds