Five A.M. In the Pinewoods

David Grossmann, "Among the Fallen Leaves"

Five A.M. in the Pinewoods

I’d seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.

Mary Oliver

Mary Oliver uses such a light touch in her nature poems.*The way she describes here how she watches the deer, waits for them, still and silent as they come toward her, seems to me to be a description also of how she writes a poem. She doesn't push her ideas forward, she waits for the thoughts and ideas to come of their own volition. You might wonder, is that unusual? Probably not. But each poet has their own way of working (sometimes each poem has its own way too, I suppose), and it matters. Some know exactly what they want to say, and go about getting it down. Some make lists, and describe, as if getting the thing or idea or place down piece by piece. And some let the words come, not knowing what they will say. It makes a difference, how a poem happens. That last stanza  - I keep reading it over and over. I wonder if she's saying Oh, so this poem is a prayer. As if, at the end of writing these lines she now sees what the poem meant itself to be.

  
*see also "Snowy Night" posted Feb.4, 2017