Mary Oliver, poet of the rugged soul, champion of kindness, lover of the world’s broken beauty. 1935-2019.
I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country…And nobody gets out of it, having to
Swim through the fires to stay in
This world.
— Mary Oliver
I’m listening to a recent This American Life podcast, when a section of Brautigan’s The Abortion is read aloud, I lay down the scissors I’m holding. I’m sixteen again, hidden in the public library stacks, unable to believe what I’m reading. What is this? Who is Brautigan?
An instant fan of Brautigan and simultaneously unable to exactly figure out why, when I listen to his words read aloud, I suddenly see his writing is all reverence, all poetry, all a hymn to living — in the most utterly mundane way — an acknowledgement of love and love gone awry, of abortion and bliss — funny and sorrowful and joyous.
Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.
―
Midnight, my 19-year-old pulled free the extension cord on the Christmas lights around our barn door and came in the house, banging snow from her boots.
On my bed, the cats pricked up their ears and hurried downstairs. I followed.
Cheeks flushed with full moon sledding down Mt. Mansfield, my daughter and I talked about the history of birth control — the political is personal — ate cold clementines, and fed the cats shreds of turkey from our fingers. Over our metal-roofed house, the moon made her silent, luminescently gorgeous way through the heavens. We turned off the lights and headed upstairs to bed. I parted the curtains and touched a single fingertip to the cold glass.
In this season of a new and vulnerable family on the move, of the ineffable mysteries of angels and holy gifts, a prayer for domestic peace, in odd and unexpected moments.
Christmas Eve, Hubbard Park, Montpelier, Vermont, 2018
Stony Soil Vermont 