The Pond
by Mary Oliver
August of another summer, and once again
I am drinking the sun
and the lilies again are spread across the water.
I know now what they want is to touch each other.
I have not been here for many years
during which time I kept living my life.
Like the heron, who can only croak, who wishes he
could sing,
I wish I could sing.
A little thanks from every throat would be appropriate.
This is how it has been, and this is how it is:
All my life I have been able to feel happiness,
except whatever was not happiness,
which I also remember.
Each of us wears a shadow.
But just now it is summer again
and I am watching the lilies bow to each other,
then slide on the wind and the tug of desire,
close, close to one another,
Soon now, I'll turn and start for home.
And who knows, maybe I'll be singing.
This poem is included in Mary Oliver's latest collection of poetry, Felicity, published by Penguin Press in October, 2015.
JRB’s comment: The herons I come upon in the marsh I walk beside are usually silent, almost still in their slow graceful searching movement. I’ve never heard one croak, but there is a sub-species called whistling heron, and typically the voices of birds are more diverse than we imagine, depending on what experience they’re conveying to one another. Whatever the heron’s wishes (do herons wish?), like the poet I too wish I could sing. This poet knows that she can and does sing, as do even those of us taught when young that we cannot carry a tune. My high school Latin teacher, leading us in Latinate song, bent down beside me to listen for a moment, then said quietly, “John, why don’t you just hum.”
This heron, fishing, photographed so beautifully by Chris Harshaw, is a song.
As is Mary Oliver’s poem, a tribute to “living my life,” wholly, in each moment, again and again, light and shadow, season by season, whatever we find and are given, leaving home, turning, returning, singing or humming, or croaking.