October

October

by Mary Oliver

I. There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave. A longing wells up in its throat like a blossom as it breathes slowly.

What does the world mean to you if you can’t trust it to go on shining when you’re

not there? and there’s a tree, long-fallen; once the bees flew to it, like a procession of messengers, and filled it with honey.

II. I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the green pine tree:

little dazzler, little song, little mouthful.

III. The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It grunts into view. There is no measure for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes– there is no telling the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns and yawns.

Near the fallen tree something–a leaf snapped loose from the branch and fluttering down–tries to pull me into its trap of attention.

IV. It pulls me into its trap of attention,

And when I turn again, the bear is gone.

V. Look, hasn’t my body already felt like the body of a flower?

VI. Look, I want to love this world as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get to be alive and know it.

VII. Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not the flowers, not the blackberries brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees; I won’t whisper my own name. One morning the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident, and didn’t see me–and I thought:

so this is the world. I’m not in it. It is beautiful.