Mary Oliver continues to tutor us in attention, gratitude, and reverence in this new collection of 47 poems, written in the last two years. In "Why I Wake Early," she marvels at the sun in her face and "the nodding morning glories." It is a good thing to start the day on a note of praise. In "Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?" she states, "I look; morning to night I am never done with looking." She doesn't just mean standing around but being keenly attentive and receptive to whatever surprises may come. And since God and the universe are cordial, the blessings abound! While Oliver is out exploring she is delighted to find an arrowhead. But in the poem "The Arrowhead," she realizes that it is not our place to take, to put the word "mine" on anything that has its own small and fond community.
The natural world is such a marvelous spiritual teacher. In "How Everything Adores Being Alive," Oliver tests her empathy for an insect, and in "This World" she tries to write a poem that has "in it nothing fancy" but she is swept away by the sights, the sounds, and then the silence of a tulip, ants, stones, aspen tress, and spiders. And in "Breakage," Oliver demonstrates her spiritual literacy by trying to figure out what everything she sees means and then begins "slowly, to read the whole story."
One of our favorite poems in this varied collection is "Mindful" where the poet admits that each day she is bowled over by "something / that more or less / kills me / with delight." So the daily mission is to keep our senses alive to all the ordinary wonders that are ready, willing, and able to present themselves to us at any time. And that brings us to "Logos," a poem about the miracles of Jesus and the proper way to receive them. "Imagine him, speaking, / and don't worry about what is reality, / or what is plain, or what is mysterious. / If you were there, it was all those things. . . . / Accept the miracle." An attitude of gratitude informs this poem and all the others.
