Enter Label: To be a tree
My sister sent me the podcast On Being with an interview of Mary Oliver (1935 - 2019), a famous poet who won the National Book Award and Pulitzer. I, a poetry neophyte, just barely recognized her poem The Summer Day.
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary grew up in a bad home, had a bad childhood, and would escape by wandering around in the backwoods of Ohio. Later she got out of Ohio, and became synonymous with Provincetown, where she retreated to and built her literary volume.
Mary says she was saved by poetry, and the beauty of the world.
Poetry is convivial, it’s very old, sacred, it wishes for a community, community, ritual, when you write a poem you write for anybody and everybody, you have to be ready to do that. It’s a giving, a gift to yourself and to anybody who has hunger for it.
She also says that, ultimately, writing poetry was a lonely proposition, often it felt like she was talking to herself. But she absolutely adored nature, and would write with a notebook in hand while walking outside. Simultaneously, writing, walking, observing. (Not surprisingly, she advises writers not to use a computer). She was so captivated by the world of nature, more so than humans, until she started to heal later in life.
I share this because the timing of when my sister sent this to me was truly weird. Just that morning, I was alone, writing to a tree. Needless to say, it was a bit sad, but it absorbed me. I was comforted listening to Mary and her love for nature, which necessitated isolation.
Well, what I ended up scribbling is very beginner poetry, I know, but I wanted to share as the serendipitous nature alone made its mark on my healing journey. I guess I will call it, To Be a Tree.
Have you ever locked eyes with a tree?
At first of course there’s no consequence
and no bother
one looks completely past the other
The elegant scarecrow busies herself
birds plumbing bark
squirrels traipsing spine
wind simply harassing
And I, lost in self-pity
But one day I catch her attention
I know she sees me!
She, still teeming with wildlife, wind
She grows visibly centered
I look harder
She is now still as a photograph
And yet, a message escapes
through the trunk
She is transmitting to me
Stillness
And I, with the dysfunctional masthead
And I, with the internal riot that pains me
I understand
To be still
until I right myself
and reach the same vertical height as the mainsail
Well anyway, that’s what this tree was telling me. It was there for me, on a long morning in this healing process, and I really did try to climb into it with my eyes, my being.
Incidentally, I also read about the importance of poetry in the book the Short History of Jews that I mentioned last week. There it mentions how Jews in the Islamic World (632-1500) adopted certain manner and customs of the Muslims, and they acquired a taste for Arabic poetry, which was very popular in the Arabic speaking world. Poetry was not considered merely entertainment, but had a role in publicity and propaganda. While Jews had written poetry for Jewish worship, there was no tradition to do so outside of liturgical purposes. The Jews adopted the Arabic literary manners, and soon were writing poems in Hebrew about most topics that were fashionable: love, wine, drinking, friendship, personal and public affairs. In essence, this really brought the Jews out into a new world of intellectual and artistic expression.
I wonder, when did poetry become a dirty word to me? Is it because I’ve seen so much bad poetry on Instagram, or because I’m not very good at it, or that I don’t really know when a poem can be considered finished, or I’ve never studied it, or the times it came up in high school the teachers suuuuuuucked, or in class I felt I had the worst analysis compared to everyone else. Or is it just another one of those things, an art form that makes no money in a capitalistic country, is it as simple as that?
Finally, in the podcast, Mary talks about how she was influenced by Rumi and even started writing shorter poetry as a result, as if to say, what else is there to say? In Don’t Worry, 4 years prior to her death, Mary writes:
Things take the time they take. Don’t
worry.
How many roads did Saint Augustine follow
before he became Saint Augustine?
She says of this: It was NOT one day’s work. Mary also said there is only 3 or 4 poems that she didn’t change a word of.
And now, for a slightly commoner end to this ambling discussion…
Growing up in the city, nature to me was what you’d expect. All the things happening, the storefronts, the little bodegas, buying Rolos (Shout out to Rolos!) with my bus fare and walking from 75th and West End to 53rd and Lexington, practically every day, to swim practice. For many blocks, in a trance, just my shoes on the road. And for many blocks, alive, looking around at many incredible things. Central Park, whether peak lush or barren tree line, serene ponds frozen or sweltering, always beautiful. The transition from the broader West to a narrower East side, until splat, the gray of Lexington, with all this stuff rushing past you, but also walking with you, these people, these little worlds. One time, a man in an antique shops gave me a framed photograph of Betty Boop for no (knowable) reason at all!
Yes, chance encounters with purveyors was like nature to me.
But right now, right now, it’s all so much smaller.
It’s just me and one tree in my parents courtyard.