Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches
by Mary Oliver
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left --
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
---
My friend Michael recently reminded me of this poem when I met up with him in Burlington last night as he passed through. I had this poem committed to memory for some time (thanks to extensive theatre training), and I recited it at a sacred fire held after the death of a close friend of ours over five years ago.
Clearly, it is an amazing poem, and it was one of my inspirations for setting forth and trying to live a life filled with adventure and wonder. I know that in my three and a half years in between high school and college, that was my goal. Even during college, it was still my mantra. As time goes on, we all start to feel the pull to stay at the "desk" referenced in the poem, and we step out less and less into the "fields."
My last post explored the idea that we simply live with too much stuff, and this is what keeps us from getting out there and exploring. But I now realize that exploring doesn't just have to be the North Face-style "Never Stop Exploring" adventures that take you to the high peaks, distant shores, and isolated peoples of the world. Mary asks us if we have ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives. People. Our family... friends... neighbors... and strangers.
I keep finding myself in positions where I just "don't have the time" for spontaneity anymore. To sit up all night in great conversation and not worry about what time I have to wake up in the morning. Those are the times when we can really enter the lives of other people. My good friend David Dunbar (whose amazing blog is linked on this site - the DKDK Zone), reminds us that is experience is what we do with what happens to us. One of the greatest things we can do with our experiences is to share them. With other people, to make meaning of it. This is where those long walks, not hurried dinners, and all-night conversations come into play. They help us make meaning.
Too often, we just don't allow the time for this to happen. Now, it may seem like I am being entitled, but I really don't think that we all have to work as hard as we think we do. If, as I said in the last post, we cast away most of those things that are holding us back, that are sucking our resources (monetary, physical, and emotional). We'd have more time to allow for long dinners, long walks, and long conversation if we weren't so tasked-out all day long. So, as time goes on, I will choose jobs and lifestyles that that allow me to take back time in my life. The time it takes to ramble my way home.
