A Thousand Mornings (3 page)

THE MORNING PAPER

Read one newspaper daily (the morning edition

is the best

for by evening you know that you at least

have lived through another day)

and let the disasters, the unbelievable

yet approved decisions,

soak in.

I don’t need to name the countries,

ours among them.

What keeps us from falling down, our faces

to the ground; ashamed, ashamed?

THE POET COMPARES HUMAN NATURE
TO THE OCEAN FROM WHICH WE CAME

The sea can do craziness, it can do smooth,

it can lie down like silk breathing

or toss havoc shoreward; it can give

gifts or withhold all; it can rise, ebb, froth

like an incoming frenzy of fountains, or it can

sweet-talk entirely. As I can too,

and so, no doubt, can you, and you.

ON TRAVELING TO BEAUTIFUL PLACES

Every day I’m still looking for God

and I’m still finding him everywhere,

in the dust, in the flowerbeds.

Certainly in the oceans,

in the islands that lay in the distance

continents of ice, countries of sand

each with its own set of creatures

and God, by whatever name.

How perfect to be aboard a ship with

maybe a hundred years still in my pocket.

But it’s late, for all of us,

and in truth the only ship there is

is the ship we are all on

burning the world as we go.

THE MAN WHO HAS MANY ANSWERS

The man who has many answers

is often found

in the theaters of information

where he offers, graciously,

his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,

to comfort himself, makes music.

LIFE STORY

When I lived under the black oaks

I felt I was made of leaves.

When I lived by Little Sister Pond,

I dreamed I was the feather of the blue heron

left on the shore;

I was the pond lily, my root delicate as an artery,

my face like a star,

my happiness brimming.

Later I was the footsteps that follow the sea.

I knew the tides, I knew the ingredients of the wrack.

I knew the eider, the red-throated loon

with his uplifted beak and his smart eye.

I felt I was the tip of the wave,

the pearl of water on the eider’s glossy back.

No, there’s no escaping, nor would I want to escape

this outgo, this foot-loosening, this solution

to gravity and a single shape.

Now I am here, later I will be there.

I will be that small cloud, staring down at the water,

the one that stalls, that lifts its white legs, that

looks like a lamb.

“FOR I WILL CONSIDER MY DOG PERCY”

For I will consider my dog Percy.

For he was made small but brave of heart.

For if he met another dog he would kiss her in kindness.

For when he slept he snored only a little.

For he could be silly and noble in the same moment.

For when he spoke he remembered the trumpet and when

he scratched he struck the floor like a drum.

For he ate only the finest food and drank only the

purest of water, yet would nibble of dead fish also.

For he came to me impaired and therefore certain of

short life, yet thoroughly rejoiced in each day.

For he took his medicines without argument.

For he played easily with the neighborhood’s Bull

Mastiff.

For when he came upon mud he splashed through it.

For he was an instrument for the children to learn

benevolence upon.

For he listened to poems as well as love-talk.

For when he sniffed it was as if he were being

pleased by every part of the world.

For when he sickened he rallied as many times as

he could.

For he was a mixture of gravity and waggery.

For we humans can seek self-destruction in ways

he never dreamed of.

For he took actions both cunning and reckless, yet

refused always to offer himself to be admonished.

For his sadness though without words was

understandable.

For there was nothing sweeter than his peace

when at rest.

For there was nothing brisker than his life when

in motion.

For he was of the tribe of Wolf.

For when I went away he would watch for me at

the window.

For he loved me.

For he suffered before I found him, and never

forgot it.

For he loved Anne.

For when he lay down to enter sleep he did not argue

about whether or not God made him.

For he could fling himself upside down and laugh

a true laugh.

For he loved his friend Ricky.

For he would dig holes in the sand and then let

Ricky lie in them.

For often I see his shape in the clouds and this is

a continual blessing.

VARANASI

Early in the morning we crossed the ghat,

where fires were still smoldering,

and gazed, with our Western minds, into the Ganges.

A woman was standing in the river up to her waist;

she was lifting handfuls of water and spilling it

over her body, slowly and many times,

as if until there came some moment

of inner satisfaction between her own life and the river’s.

Then she dipped a vessel she had brought with her

and carried it filled with water back across the ghat,

no doubt to refresh some shrine near where she lives,

for this is the holy city of Shiva, maker

of the world, and this is his river.

I can’t say much more, except that it all happened

in silence and peaceful simplicity, and something that felt

like the bliss of a certainty and a life lived

in accordance with that certainty.

I must remember this, I thought, as we fly back

to America.

Pray God I remember this.

NOTE

The poem “For I Will Consider My Dog Percy” is obviously derivative of Christopher Smart’s poem “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry.” It is in no way an imitation except in style. Jeoffry wins entirely. But for a few days I simply stood upon the shoulders of that wondrous poem and began to think about Percy.

The lines in italics, except for the exchange of names and altering of verb tense from present to past, are Christopher Smart’s own, and in that way are acknowledged to be so.

M. O.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to the editors of the following publications in which the listed poems previously appeared, some in slightly different form.

APPALACHIA:
“Foolishness? No, It’s Not”; “The Instant”

BARK:
“The First Time Percy Came Back”

FIVE POINTS:
“
Hum, Hum
”; “Poem of the One World”

THE NEW YORK TIMES:
“Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness”

ORION:
“Life Story”

PARABOLA:
“I Go Down to the Shore”; “After I Fall Down the Stairs at the Golden Temple”; “If I Were”; “And Bob Dylan Too”; “The Morning Paper”

PORTLAND:
“Today”

SHENANDOAH:
“Out of the Stump Rot Something”

WILDERNESS:
“Extending the Airport Runway”

S
ELECT
T
ITLES
ALSO
BY
M
ARY
O
LIVER

POETRY

American Primitive

Dream Work

New and Selected Poems Volume One

White Pine

The Leaf and the Cloud

What Do We Know

Why I Wake Early

New and Selected Poems Volume Two

Swan

PROSE

Blue Pastures

Winter Hours

A Poetry Handbook