I’m Joe Riley with KWBU, and this is Likely Stories.
I first discovered Mary Oliver’s poetry sometime in the ’80s. I was browsing the poetry section of a bookstore and came across American Primitive. I had never heard of Mary Oliver – maybe I was attracted to the cover, I don’t know – but when I took it from the shelf and began to leaf through, I knew I’d found something special. From then on, I began collecting Oliver’s work whenever a new volume was published, and I’ve loved all of them.
This year I discovered Thirst, which was published in 2006. Somehow I missed it when it first came out.
There are forty-three poems in this volume - beautiful poems, nothing new there. But they move in a new direction, dealing with grief and sadness after the death of her long-time partner, and moving toward spirituality, toward faith.
Here’s one:
Making the House Ready for the Lord
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice – it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances – but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.
And this, the volume’s epilogue:
Thirst
Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the
hour and the bell; grant me, in your
mercy, a little more time. Love for the
earth and love for you are having such a
long conversation in my heart. Who
knows what will finally happen or
where I will be sent, yet already I have
given a great many things away, expect-
ing to be told to pack nothing, except the
prayers which, with this thirst, I am
slowly learning.
In a 2015 interview with Krista Tippett, host of the program and podcast On Being, Oliver spoke of overcoming a difficult childhood.She said, “I escaped it, barely, with years of trouble. But I did find the entire world, in looking for something. But I got saved by poetry, and I got saved by the beauty of the world.”
With her words, Mary Oliver offers that beauty to us – of nature, of the world, even of sadness and grief.
Thirst,Poems by Mary Oliver is available from Beacon Press, Boston.
Mary Oliver died in 2019 at the age of 83. She had written more than 25 books of poetry. She was the winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 and the National Book Award in 1992.