Mary Oliver - Red Bird

P OETRY
No Voyage and Other Poems
The River Styx, Ohio, and Other Poems
Twelve Moons
American Primitive
Dream Work
House of Light
New and Selected Poems Volume One
White Pine
West Wind
The Leaf and the Cloud
What Do We Know
Owls and Other Fantasies
Why I Wake Early
Blue Iris
New and Selected Poems Volume Two
Thirst

C HAPBOOKS AND S PECIAL E DITIONS
The Night Traveler
Sleeping in the Forest
Provincetown
Wild Geese (UK Edition)

P ROSE
A Poetry Handbook
Blue Pastures
Rules for the Dance
Winter Hours
Long Life
Our World (with photographs by Molly Malone Cook)

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love
many things.

Vincent van Gogh

Red bird came all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,
those dun-colored darlings,
so hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds.
I know He has many children,
not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason
perhaps because the winter is so long
and the sky so black-blue,

or perhaps because the heart narrows
as often as it opens
I am grateful

that red bird comes all winter
firing up the landscape
as nothing else can do.

I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,

hovered
and easily
she adored
every blossom,

not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or dont praise
the way we love
or dont love
but the way

we long to be
that happy
in the heaven of earth
that wild, that loving.

All night
under the pines
the fox
moves through the darkness
with a mouthful of teeth
and a reputation for death
which it deserves.
In the spicy
villages of the mice
he is famous,
his nose
in the grass
is like an earthquake,
his feet
on the path
is a message so absolute
that the mouse, hearing it,
makes himself
as small as he can
as he sits silent
or, trembling, goes on
hunting among the grasses
for the ripe seeds.
Maker of All Things,
including appetite,
including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us, sometime or other,
flee for the sake
of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow
let me hold on
to the edge of your robe
as you determine
what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.

When the flute players
couldnt think of what to say next

they laid down their pipes,
then they lay down themselves
beside the river

and just listened.
Some of them, after a while,
jumped up
and disappeared back inside the busy town.
But the rest
so quiet, not even thoughtful
are still there,

still listening.

I wish I was twenty and in love with life
and still full of beans.

Onward, old legs!
There are the long, pale dunes; on the other side
the roses are blooming and finding their labor
no adversity to the spirit.

Upward, old legs! There are the roses, and there is the sea
shining like a song, like a body
I want to touch

though Im not twenty
and wont be again but ah! seventy. And still
in love with life. And still
full of beans.

I have seen the great feet
leaping
into the river

and I have seen moonlight
milky
along the long muzzle

and I have seen the body
of something
scaled and wonderful

slumped in the sudden fire of its mouth,
and I could not tell
which fit me

more comfortably, the power,
or the powerlessness;
neither would have me

entirely; I was divided,
consumed,
by sympathy,

pity, admiration.
After a while
it was done,

the fish had vanished, the bear
lumped away
to the green shore

and into the trees. And then there was only
this story.
It followed me home

and entered my house
a difficult guest
with a single tune

which it hums all day and through the night
slowly or briskly,
it doesnt matter,

it sounds like a river leaping and falling;
it sounds like a body
falling apart.

There is a place where the town ends,
and the fields begin.
Its not marked but the feet know it,
also the heart that is longing for refreshment
and, equally, for repose.

Someday well live in the sky.
Meanwhile, the house of our lives is this green world.
The fields, the ponds, the birds.
The thick black oakssurely they are
the invention of something wonderful.
And the tiger lilies.
And the runaway honeysuckle that no one
will ever trim again.

Where is it? I ask, and then
my feet know it.

One jump, and Im home.

Listen says fox it is music to run
over the hills to lick
dew from the leaves to nose along
the edges of the ponds to smell the fat
ducks in their bright feathers but
far out, safe in their rafts of
sleep. It is like
music to visit the orchard, to find
the vole sucking the sweet of the apple, or the
rabbit with his fast-beating heart. Death itself
is a music. Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a dream. It cannot
be told. It is flesh and bones
changing shape and with good cause, mercy
is a little child beside such an invention. It is
music to wander the black back roads
outside of town no one awake or wondering
if anything miraculous is ever going to
happen, totally dumb to the fact of every
moments miracle. Dont think I havent
peeked into windows. I see you in all your seasons
making love, arguing, talking about God
as if he were an idea instead of the grass,
instead of the stars, the rabbit caught
in one good teeth-whacking hit and brought
home to the den. What I am, and I know it, is
responsible, joyful, thankful. I would not
give my life for a thousand of yours.

Every day
I consider
the lilies
how they are dressed

and the ravens
how they are fed
and how each of these
is a miracle

of Lord-love
and of sorrow
for the lilies
in their bright dresses

cannot last
but wrinkle fast
and fall,
and the little ravens

in their windy nest
rise up
in such pleasure
at the sight

of fresh meat
that makes their lives sweet
and what a puzzle it is
that such brevity

the lavish clothes,
the ruddy food
makes the world
so full, so good.