The afternoon is the other part of this story.
Have you ever found something beautiful, and maybe just in
time?
How such a challenge can fill you!
Jesus could walk over the water.
I had to walk ankle-deep in the sand, and I did it.
My bones didn’t quite snap.
Come on in, and see me smile.
I probably won’t stop for hours.
Already, in the warmth, the turtle has raised its head, is looking
around.
Today, who could deny it, I am an important person.
The Poet Goes to Indiana
I’ll tell you a half-dozen things
that happened to me
in Indiana
when I went that far west to teach.
You tell me if it was worth it.
I lived in the country
with my dog—
part of the bargain of coming.
And there was a pond
with fish from, I think, China.
I felt them sometimes against my feet.
Also, they crept out of the pond, along its edges,
to eat the grass.
I’m not lying.
And I saw coyotes,
two of them, at dawn, running over the seemingly
unenclosed fields.
And once a deer, but a buck, thick-necked, leaped
into the road just—oh, I mean just, in front of my car—
and we both made it home safe.
And once the blacksmith came to care for the four horses,
or the three horses that belonged to the owner of the house,
and I bargained with him, if I could catch the fourth,
he, too, would have hooves trimmed
for the Indiana winter,
and apples did it,
and a rope over the neck did it,
so I won something wonderful;
and there was, one morning,
an owl
flying, oh pale angel, into
the hay loft of a barn,
I see it still;
and there was once, oh wonderful,
a new horse in the pasture,
a tall, slim being—a neighbor was keeping him there—
and she put her face against my face,
put her muzzle, her nostrils, soft as violets,
against my mouth and my nose, and breathed me,
to see who I was,
a long quiet minute—minutes—
then she stamped feet and whisked tail
and danced deliciously into the grass away, and came back.
She was saying, so plainly, that I was good, or good enough.
Such a fine time I had teaching in Indiana.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mink
A mink,
jointless as heat, was
tip-toeing along
the edge of the creek,
which was still in its coat of snow,
yet singing—I could hear it!—
the old song
of brightness.
It was one of those places,
turning and twisty,
that Ruskin might have painted, though
he didn’t. And there were trees
leaning this way and that,
seed-beaded
buckthorn mostly, but at the moment
no bird, the only voice
that of the covered water—like a long,
unknotted thread, it kept
slipping through. The mink
had a hunger in him
bigger than his shadow, which was gathered
like a sheet of darkness under his
neat feet which were busy
making dents in the snow. He sniffed
slowly and thoroughly in all
four directions, as though
it was a prayer to the whole world, as far
as he could capture its beautiful
smells—the iron of the air, the blood
of necessity. Maybe, for him, even
the pink sun fading away to the edge
of the world had a smell,
of roses, or of terror, who knows
what his keen nose was
finding out. For me, it was the gift of the winter
to see him. Once, like a hot, dark-brown pillar,
he stood up — and then he ran forward, and was gone.
I stood awhile and then walked on
over the white snow: the terrible, gleaming
loneliness. It took me, I suppose,
something like six more weeks to reach
finally a patch of green, I paused so often
to be glad, and grateful, and even then carefully across
the vast, deep woods I kept looking back.
THE PERCY POEMS
Percy (One)
Our new dog, named for the beloved poet,
ate a book which unfortunately we had
left unguarded.
Fortunately it was the Bhagavad Gita,
of which many copies are available.
Every day now, as Percy grows
into the beauty of his life, we touch
his wild, curly head and say,
“Oh, wisest of little dogs.”
Percy (Two)
I have a little dog who likes to nap with me.
He climbs on my body and puts his face in my neck.
He is sweeter than soap.
He is more wonderful than a diamond necklace,
which can’t even bark.
I would like to take him to Kashmir and the Ukraine,
and Jerusalem and Palestine and Iraq and Darfur,
that the sorrowing thousands might see his laughing mouth.
I would like to take him to Washington, right into
the oval office
where Donald Rumsfeld would crawl out of the president’s
armpit
and kneel down on the carpet, and romp like a boy.
For once, for a moment, a rational man.
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night (Three)
He puts his cheek against mine
and makes small, expressive sounds.
And when I’m awake, or awake enough
he turns upside down, his four paws
in the air
and his eyes dark and fervent.
Tell me you love me, he says.
Tell me again.
Could there be a sweeter arrangement? Over and over
he gets to ask it.
I get to tell.
Percy (Four)
I went to church.
I walked on the beach
and played with Percy.
I answered the phone
and paid the bills.
I spoke her name
a hundred times.
I knel
t in the dark
and said some holy words.
I went downstairs,
I watered the flowers,
I fed Percy.
News of Percy (Five)
In the morning of his days he is in the afternoon of his life.
It’s some news about kidneys, those bean-shaped necessities,
of which, of his given two, he has one working, and
that not well.
We named him for the poet, who died young, in the blue
waters off Italy.
Maybe we should have named him William, since Wordsworth
almost never died.
We must laugh a little at this rich and unequal world,
so they say, so they say.
And let them keep saying it.
Percy and I are going out now, to the beach, to join
his friends—
the afghan, the lab, the beautiful basset.
And let me go with good cheer in his company.
For though he is young he is beloved,
he is all but famous as he runs
across the shining beach, that faces the sea.
Percy (Six)
You’re like a little wild thing
that was never sent to school.
Sit, I say, and you jump up.
Come, I say, and you go galloping down the sand
to the nearest dead fish
with which you perfume your sweet neck.
It is summer.
How many summers does a little dog have?
Run, run, Percy.
This is our school.
Percy (Seven)
And now Percy is getting brazen.
Let’s down the beach, baby, he says.
Let’s shake it with a little barking.
Let’s find dead things, and explore them,
by mouth, if possible.
Or maybe the leavings of Paul’s horse (after which,
forgive me for mentioning it, he is fond of kissing).
Ah, this is the thing that comes to each of us.
The child grows up.
And, according to our own ideas, is practically asunder.
I understand it.
I struggle to celebrate.
I say, with a stiff upper lip familiar to many:
Just look at that curly-haired child now, he’s his own man.
Percy and Books (Eight)
Percy does not like it when I read a book.
He puts his face over the top of it and moans.
He rolls his eyes, sometimes he sneezes.
The sun is up, he says, and the wind is down.
The tide is out and the neighbor’s dogs are playing.
But Percy, I say. Ideas! The elegance of language!
The insights, the funniness, the beautiful stories
that rise and fall and turn into strength, or courage.
Books? says Percy. I ate one once, and it was enough.
Let’s go.
Percy (Nine)
Your friend is coming I say
to Percy, and name a name
and he runs to the door, his
wide mouth in its laugh-shape,
and waves, since he has one, his tail.
Emerson, I am trying to live,
as you said we must, the examined life.
But there are days I wish
there was less in my head to examine,
not to speak of the busy heart. How
would it be to be Percy, I wonder, not
thinking, not weighing anything, just running forward.
I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life (Ten)
Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.
Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Percy at His Bath, or, Ambivalence (Eleven)
Today Jill is cutting my snags and my curls.
My legs grow longer.
My tail gets brushed.
Then, the bath.
Mary has been reading a book about
a woman who made a secret journey
to Lhasa. She reads aloud to me the parts
about the village dogs, who are big and
fearless and full of bark. And, all
their lives, dirty. I am filled
with envy.
Then it’s over and I am in my bed
as white as snow and soft and all
the sea salt gone. And over every part of me
an absurd but lovely fragrance.
Percy at Breakfast (Twelve)
Percy says, I’ve eaten and I’m still hungry.
So I say, what about toast? and offer him
a dry corner.
Percy says, I like butter better.
Eggs then? I say. And we share a couple scrambled.
Good! says Percy. And then because he’s polite sometimes,
Thank you.
He turns to leave the room, then looks back
philosophically. I guess people just don’t understand,
he says, how it is never to be not hungry.
Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes (Thirteen)
First of all, I do not want to be doing this.
Second of all, Percy does not want me
to be doing this,
hanging over my desk like a besieged person
with a dull pencil and innumerable lists
of numbers.
Outside the water is blue, the sky is clear,
the tide rising.
Percy, I say, this has to be done. This is
essential. I’ll be finished eventually.
Keep me in your thoughts, he replies. Just because
I can’t count to ten doesn’t mean
I don’t remember yesterday, or anticipate today.
I give you one more hour, then we step out
into the beautiful, money-deaf gift of the world
and run.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“The Truro Bear” and “Hannah’s Children” are from Twelve Moons, copyright © 1979 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown Book Group.
“The Chance to Love Everything,” “The Kitten,” “Ghosts,” “Humpbacks,” “Moles,” and “A Meeting” are from American Primitive by Mary Oliver, copyright © 1983 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown Book Group.
“Turtle,” “Five A.M. in the Pinewoods,” “The Hermit Crab,” “Pipefish,” “How Turtles Come to Spend the Winter in the Aquarium, Then Are Flown South and Released Back Into the Sea,” and “The Summer Day” are from House of Light, copyright © 1990 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
“The Gesture” is from White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems, copyright © 1992 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
“Porcupine” and “Toad” are from White Pine: Poems and Prose Poems, copyright © 1994 by Mary Oliver, reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
“At Herring Cove” is from Blue Pastures, copyright © 1995 by Mary Oliver, reprinted by permission of Bill Reichblum.
“Swoon” is from Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems, Copyright © 1999 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
“One Hundred White-sided Dolphins” originally appeared in The New Yorker.
“One Hundred White-sided Dolphins” and “Mink” are from What Do We Know, copyright © 2002 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Da Capo Press.
“Whelks” and “Alligator Poem” are from New and Selected Poems, Volume One, copyright © 1992 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
“Carrying the Snake to the Garden” is from Long Life, copyright © 2004 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Da Capo Press.
“The Snow
Cricket” and “The Poet Goes to Indiana” are from Why I Wake Early, copyright © 2004 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
“Percy (One),” “Percy (Two),” and “Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night (Three)” are from New and Selected Poems, Volume Two, copyright © 2005 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
“Swimming with Otter,” “Percy (Four),” “News of Percy (Five),” “Percy (Six)” and “Percy (Seven)” are from Thirst, copyright © 2006 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
“Desire,” “Black Swallowtail,” “Percy and Books (Eight),” “Percy (Nine),” and “I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life (Ten)” are from Red Bird, copyright © 2008 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press.
Beacon Press
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Boston, Massachusetts 02108-2892
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Beacon Press books
are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations.
© 2008 by Mary Oliver
All rights reserved
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This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the uncoated paper ANSI/NISO specifications for permanence as revised in 1992.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oliver, Mary
The truro bear and other adventures : poems and essays / Mary Oliver.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-8070-9708-3 (acid-free paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8070-6884-5 (acid-free paper) 1. Animals—Poetry. I. Title.
PS3565.L5T78 2008
811’.54—dc22 2008015400