Slow Down and Look Harder

At the Lake

A friend from out West recently told me, “Yo, stop bloviating in your posts. Just show us the photographs. Your rambling destroys the mystery of what cannot be put into words.”

I’m sure he’s right. But if rambling is your nature, only a fast-moving train, a surgical intervention, or old age finally choking the words out of you can put a stop to it.

Photo by Luba

Still, after watching Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World, my wife, Luba, had the perfect idea: “Let’s go to the lake.” We happened to be near Lake Superior in Bethel, New York that day. The universe works in mysterious ways. So we went. And Mary Oliver’s poem “At the Lake” gave us a reason to slow down and look harder.

If my friend finds the poem too wordy, I’ll just tell him: “Yo, shut up and take it up with Mary Oliver. She’s waiting for you with a clipboard and a red pen.”

Photos by Luba

At the Lake

A fish leaps
like a black pin --
then -- when the starlight
strikes its side --

like a silver pin.
In an instant
the fish’s spine
alters the fierce line of rising

and it curls a little --
the head, like scalloped tin,
plunges back,
and it’s gone.

This is, I think,
what holiness is:
the natural world,
where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.
Inside every mind
there’s a hermit’s cave
full of light,

full of snow,
full of concentration.
I’ve knelt there,
and so have you,

hanging on
to what you love,
to what is lovely.

The lake’s
shining sheets
don’t make a ripple now,
and the stars
are going off to their blue sleep,

but the words are in place --
and the fish leaps, and leaps again
from the black plush of the poem,
that breathless space.

~ Mary Oliver ~ (1935-2019)

Bookd by Mary Oliver worth owning:

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2020)
(Handpicked by Oliver herself)

Rules For The Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse, by
Mary Oliver (1998)

Long Life: Essays and Other Writings, by Mary Oliver (2004)

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’Til next time.
ak

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