Daisies

Unknown

Daisies

It is possible, I suppose, that sometime

we will learn everything

there is to learn: what the world is, for example,

and what it means. I think this as I am crossing

from one field to another, in summer, and the

mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either

knows enough already or knows enough to be

perfectly content not knowing. Song being born

of quest he knows this: he must turn silent

were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead




oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly

unanswered. At my feet the white-petaled daisies display

the small suns of their center-piece - their, if you don't

mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course

I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and

narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know.

But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,

to see what is plain; what the sun

lights up willingly; for example - I think this

as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -

the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the

daisies for the field.

Mary Oliver



More Mary Oliver. More of her poems to punctuate my days. She recalls me to nature, and especially the "personal" natural world. "Science"might quibble, might say she anthropomorphizes, which is to accuse her of being childish and sentimental. I disagree. Seeing an animal or object as having personal meaning to us, having individuality (in the sense of uniqueness and purpose), and of their existence impacting us, as in "saying" or communicating a message to us, all of this seems obvious and true to me. (It's very strange to think that scientists, of all people, whose work involves studying natural things and phenomena closely, and whose lifework is so enjoined with nature that it could be said that it becomes part of their person; and whose attempts to describe and explain what they discover comes more close to pure poetry than any other profession aside from poets themselves, that they have so often been the ones telling us "Don't make this about you! Don't ascribe human characteristics to other forms of life!" is incredible. Impossible. "Take what is given..see what is plain."! 

 

 I walk through a field of daisies, and wonder what the mockingbird is singing about. It is singing about something that matters, both to it and to me. I look at a daisy and say it has a heart, meaning that it has a centre, an intention, and a Source - as I do - and recognize the thread between us, the pattern and symmetry we both are part of. 

 

Fact is only part of the truth. Proof is in life, in how we live in spite of what we say we think. It's personal. The bird mocks us, "as one who knows enough already or knows enough to be perfectly content not knowing". No matter how much we learn, birdsongs and flower hearts will always be speaking to us of more. Learning "all there is to learn" is not necessary, not the point. The connection, the pattern, the Source, all these, these are better than knowing. As cummings said in "little birds" ,

"may my heart always be open to little
 birds who are the secret of living
whatever they sing is better than to know". 

A Guide to the Field

Steven Dempsey

A Guide to the Field

Through this wild pasture, this mile of strewn grasses,
We walk among seedcrowns
Only half-formed at the beginning of summer
But already growing
Heavier with the burden nothing will harvest
But birds and the weather,
Some (this ryegrass) like caterpillars spinning
Cocoons out of sunlight,
And some (this lavender bluegrass) a waist-high forest
Of slender firtrees,
Still others (cheatgrass, wild barley) plotted like flowerbeds
Under flights and counter-flights
Of swallows and field sparrows. Each blade, each spikelet,
Each glume and awn, each slowly
Stiffening stem, no matter what may come
In the next wind - hail or fire -
Will take its beheading, will give up this year's ghost
With less than a murmur,
And we pass beside them now, taking together
Our first strange steps
On a path that leads us down to its end in water.
Each look, the first.
Each touch of our strange fingers, the first again.
Each movement of our bodies
As strangely startling as what the swallows dare
Skimming the pond, their wingtips
Glancing, glancing again, swept-luminous crescents,
Each act of theirs
As if for us only. They show us ways to turn
Into willing lovers
Not needing to say Yes on this day when all questions,
Even before the asking, 
Having mingled with their answers. Remember winter:
Birds gone, seeming lost,
And the grass lying down once more to pretend one death,
Dried pale and brittle
By a hard-earned hard-learned gift of seeming done
With its life. Love dies and love
Is born at the same heartroots in words once cold
And comfortless as a scattering
Of ashes: All flesh is grass meaning Love lies down
Mortal, immortal.

David Wagoner

 "A Guide to the Field" hits so many sweet spots for me: fields, grasses, swallows, "Yes", questions, the Bible - a few of my favourite things right there. And he's put in the names of the parts of grass, too. It seems to me that the naming things is a kind of poetry. Saying that something is or how it is, is a statement of existence, a calling up, a spell, but one of unveiling rather than enchanting. When Wagoner writes, "We walk among seedcrowns" and then proceeds to list the different grasses - ryegrass, lavender bluegrass, cheatgrass, wild barley - and then even more specifically,  their parts - blade, spikelet, glume, awn, stem - it's like conjuring. In my mind I walk through this field, and the grasses rise up to my inward eye, alive in every particular. As Wagoner describes the field, he also seems to describe himself in a kind of self-portrait as a field of grasses over which the birds soar and dive. By quoting the line "All flesh is grass." he can speak so easily of the fleeting beauties of life and the inevitability of death. But this grass death is not final. "Love dies and love is born at the same heartroots..." A new season will resurrect the field. And if that weren't lovely enough, there's the bit about the swallowplay in the sky and over the surface of the water, showing us how all questions have mingled with their answers. His answer, just like e.e. cummings said over and over too, is "Yes". Yes, yes, and Amen.