Mary Oliver

Sharing Mary Oliver’s World

lillian19 Comments

Privileged to spend time where once she lived.

Provincetown’s harbor,
fishing boats at rest in midafternoon sun.
Low tide walks
beneath brightly blue cloudless sky,
heads down, staring at sidling hermit crabs.
Dining in Mews Restaurant’s downstairs room,
her favorite place, ours too.
Full length windows frame tall wispy grasses
rooted in sandy beach, its rippled ridges
solidified by swirling waves.
We spend two weeks every September
in this place we cherish,
this place she called home.
We walk its narrow lanes,
marvel at Captain Stormy’s dahlia garden,
step aside for bicycles’ jingling bells.
And I journal, humbled to know
this was where Mary Oliver found delight.

Provinctown by day
Dawn of a new day

Written for dVerse, the virtual pub for poets around the globe. Today Dora asks us to be inspired by a poet or author who has died. Photos taken during our past twenty-five years of spending two-weeks annually in Provincetown. Yes, the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Mary Oliver lived in Provincetown for many years. Many of her poems were about nature as she viewed it on Cape Cod.

Coming Home
by Mary Oliver

When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place–
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.

Ode to Mary Oliver

lillian1 Comment

I see her walking through peonies
waiting patiently for the strawberry moon.
She, the night traveler in my dreams.
She bids me walk slowly, eyes open in my sleep,
to explore her natural world.
Together we soar on the wings of a hawk
as goldfinches sing and wonder precedes us.
Approaching Provincetown,
we marvel at migrating wild geese
making their cacophonous way
to their winter’s resting place.
As I begin to drift near rising
she leads me past fields of goldenrod
to a small pond bedecked in floating flowers,
lily pads asleep and yet to bloom.
Cool winds ruffle my eyelids
like rustling leaves in a tree.
The lilies break open over the dark water
as my dream retreats into dawning sky.
I awaken to a certain sharpness in the morning air
ready to take up pen, inspired by this woman.
She, the night traveler in my dreams.

Written for NAPOWRIMO, Day 25. Today we’re to write an aisling: to recount a dream or vision featuring a woman who represents the land/country on/in which the poet lives.

Mary Oliver moved to Provincetown in the 1960s and sets most of her poetry in and around this wonderful town. An avid walker, much of her poetry comes from her observances of the natural world. I’ve incorporated 9 titles of her poems in my Ode:
Peonies
Strawberry Moon
The Night Traveler
Hawk
Goldfinches
Wild Geese
Goldenrod
The Lilies Break Open Over the Dark Water
A Certain Sharpness in the Morning Air

We’ve lived in Boston for the past twenty-five years and spend two weeks of every year in Provincetown, at the very tip of Cape Cod. Photos from our visits to P’town.