[Easter Monday]
Maybe
-Mary Oliver
Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is
when something
different crosses
the threshold-the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water-
sometimes, for days,
you don't think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it-
tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was-
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer storm.
from New and Selected Poems, p. 97-98 // from House of Light (1990)
Mardi Gras through Easter Sunday and including Feast Days makes this the 49th different poet in the lent: 2006: daily poetry tag.
My idea had been to use this as a transition into Ordinary Time, but apparently we are in Eastertide for the 50 days until Pentecost and then it's Ordinary Time until Advent. As far as my posting poetry is concerned, however, it is Ordinary Time. April is Poetry Month, so I'm sure other people will continue posting, and I have books to finish reading but I'm going to enjoy the freedom from the obligation to select a poem each day.
-Mary Oliver
Sweet Jesus, talking
his melancholy madness,
stood up in the boat
and the sea lay down,
silky and sorry.
So everybody was saved
that night.
But you know how it is
when something
different crosses
the threshold-the uncles
mutter together,
the women walk away,
the young brother begins
to sharpen his knife.
Nobody knows what the soul is.
It comes and goes
like the wind over the water-
sometimes, for days,
you don't think of it.
Maybe, after the sermon,
after the multitude was fed,
one or two of them felt
the soul slip forth
like a tremor of pure sunlight
before exhaustion,
that wants to swallow everything,
gripped their bones and left them
miserable and sleepy,
as they are now, forgetting
how the wind tore at the sails
before he rose and talked to it-
tender and luminous and demanding
as he always was-
a thousand times more frightening
than the killer storm.
from New and Selected Poems, p. 97-98 // from House of Light (1990)
Mardi Gras through Easter Sunday and including Feast Days makes this the 49th different poet in the lent: 2006: daily poetry tag.
My idea had been to use this as a transition into Ordinary Time, but apparently we are in Eastertide for the 50 days until Pentecost and then it's Ordinary Time until Advent. As far as my posting poetry is concerned, however, it is Ordinary Time. April is Poetry Month, so I'm sure other people will continue posting, and I have books to finish reading but I'm going to enjoy the freedom from the obligation to select a poem each day.