quotations and poetry

Bone

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out
what the soul is,
and where hidden,
and what shape –

and so, last week,
when I found on the beach
the ear bone
of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought
maybe I was close
to discovering something –
for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest
in any of us, man or whale; shaped
like a squat spoon
with a pink scoop where

once, in a lively swimmer’s head,
it joined its two sisters
in the house of hearing,
it was only

two inches long –
and I thought: the soul
might be like this –
so hard, so necessary –

3.

yet almost nothing.
Beside me
the gray sea
was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over
its time-ridiculing roar;
I looked but I couldn’t see anything
through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand
is there at the bottom,
though our eyes have never seen it,
nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down
into fractions, and facts –
certainties –
and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.
Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

– Mary Oliver

image: Georgia O’Keeffe, Pelvis With the Distance, 1943

My father’s brother, Jonathan, died in the 80s at the age of 36. I don’t remember very much about his service (I was 8 or 9) but I do remember my father, brown-haired and glossy-eyed, wearing a dark suit, standing at the pulpit of the church and reading High Flight by John Magee. His voice was steady but full of emotion, and I recall like it was yesterday gazing up at my dad from the hard wooden pew next to Hilary. It was one of those moments that I felt like I was floating outside myself, watching, even as I experienced it. I had never heard High Flight before, but I’ve heard it many times since. And every single time, I’ve thought of Jonathan, who was a blue-eyed engineer, a passionate glider pilot who loved the skies and his two blond boys in equal measure.

Today, walking through the Shelburne Museum in the pouring rain, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a plaque bearing the names of soldiers lost in World War II and the words of High Flight. My voice caught in my throat as I paused and told Grace and Whit all that I remembered about Jonathan. In the most unexpected place (northern Vermont in the rain) I found myself thinking of my dad, and his brothers, and the ways that both the ocean and the sky can introduce us to divinity, and the way that tragedy can swoop down and alter our lives forever.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of – wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

– John Magee, 1941

I mean, by such flightiness, something that feels unsatisfied at the center of my life – that makes me shaky, fickle, inquisitive, and hungry.  I could call it a longing for home and not be far wrong.  Or I could call it a longing for whatever supersedes, if it cannot pass through, understanding.  Other words that come to mind: faith, grace, rest.  In my outward appearance and life habits I hardly change … But at the center: I am shaking; I am flashing like tinsel.

– Mary Oliver (Long Life)

All through our gliding journey, on this day as on so many others, a little song runs in through my mind. I say a song because it passes musically, but it is really just words, a thought that is neither strange nor complex. In fact, how strange it would be not to think it – not to have such music inside one’s head and body, on such an afternoon. What does it mean, say the words, that the earth is so beautiful? And what shall I do about it? What is the gift that I should bring the world? What is the life that I should live?

– Mary Oliver, Long Life