I tied together
a few slender reeds, cut
notches to breathe across and made
such music you stood
shock still and then
followed as I wandered growing
moment by moment
slant-eyed and shaggy, my feet
slamming over the rocks, growing
hard as horn, and there
you were behind me, drowning
in the music, letting
the silver clasps out of your hair,
hurrying, taking off
your clothes.
*
I can’t remember
where this happened but I think
it was late summer when everything
is full of fire and rounding to fruition
and whatever doesn’t,
or resists,
must lie like a field of dark water under
the pulling moon,
tossing and tossing.
*
In the brutal elegance of cities
I have walked down
the halls of hotels
and heard this music behind
shut doors.
*
Do you think the heart
is accountable? Do you think the body
any more than a branch
of the honey locust tree,
hunting water,
hunching toward the sun,
shivering, when it feels
that good, into
white blossoms?
Or do you think there is a kind
of music, a certain strand
that lights up the otherwise
blunt wilderness of the body —
a furious
and unaccountable selectivity?
*
Ah well, anyway, whether or not
it was in late summer, or even
in our part of the world, it is all
only a dream. I did not
turn into the lithe goat god. Nor did you come running
like that.
*
Did you?
“Music” from American Primitive
Poems by Mary Oliver
Little Brown & Company, New York 1983
Photo by Robin Whittle