Mary and the Stars

Part One

Tonight I am out in my little back yard, talking with Mary Oliver again. Mary has (had) no idea what she has meant to me. She never knew how some people actually did not like her poetry, but I didn’t give a damn. I hope she wouldn’t care, either. Most of us knew how good she was, how her words worked. They did nature up so wonderfully, with animals and plants and breezes with eyes, softened death, owls and geese and stars. Portraits of what matters and means.

Tonight I am out here talking with Mary as if we have known each other all our lives and as if we were best friends. Maybe we are best friends, in some way. I realize that we have never actually met, never talked, but I know her through her words and her words have always loved me, just as I have always loved her words. 

Does that sound strange, the way I’ve put it? It’s true, though: I have always loved words. Maybe a little too much. Can you tell?

In any event, tonight I am out here and it is about eleven in the evening. I am here because I need help and a few stars. Mary has a poem or two for that and I am enticing them down from her sky because, as is probably obvious, that I need some serious help and the poems are exactly what I need. You might go so far as to say I believe in them, although they aren’t a religion to me, not quite.

I am looking skyward on this warm, nearly-August night. I am not really talking with Mary, even though I said that I was a bit earlier. What I’m actually doing is talking her. That is, I am talking her words. I am talking with my mouth and teeth and tongue, I know that for sure. Mine, not anybody else’s. I am not reciting something written in a book nor reading anything. I am talking and I am her. I am talking her. There is no book in my hands, see? My hands are empty. You seem to want to help, because you tell me

Here in my head, language

keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends

with the hard white stars

whose flaring and hissing are not speech

but pure radiance?

Mary, we need to talk. How do you know the stars are hard? Have you ever touched one? Do you want friends who are so far away? Are you sure they don’t talk? I mean, I thought I had heard them a few times, but it seems I was mistaken. Do you think there’s a possibility that they speak a language that isn’t yours? I mean, people sometimes describe foreign languages in odd ways. German sounds like barking, some say. English sounds like people speaking it are angry, some say. Portuguese sounds like loving mush, some say. You say they don’t speak, though. Let me give this a try:

Language is making tiny noises in my head. Here, in my back yard.

Mary, why do stars need to actually speak? They shine and do that perfectly, and that could mean they talk, yes, but instead of sound they talk with light, I think. I’m so al concerned that you say they hiss. Are you afraid of them? I am afraid I’ve never heard them do that. Hiss. They are not snakes, are they? Or cats. They aren’t cats. I feel confused. These are not the stars I’m used to.

I need your tiny language just a little bit longer. It’s that radiance you talk about. Things are pretty dark here. Not just out here in the yard, but inside. Here. Where I am. Where there is no purity standing on the grass. Just me, trying hard to listen to the stars, hoping. 

How can I hope to be friends

with the yawning spaces between them

where nothing, ever is spoken?

Am I sensing, Mary, you are saying there can be no friendship without speech? Have you met those spaces between the stars? Are you certain they are empty? Have you been immersed in that region of no speech, where nothing, ever is spoken? I have. I am. In a place that opens its mouth looking to devour me. Still, I can’t expect you to tell me everything, Mary. Maybe you could just let me borrow some of your words, I know your sentences can cure. That’s why I am looking at the stars now.

Tonight I am definitely feeling a bit unsettled, which is basically the reason I needed to have this conversation, Mary. I have been hoping to focus on the stars, hoping they had something to say, and now you’re tugging at me, wanting me to look at emptiness. No, to be emptiness. Words are all I had, but now they’re gone. You’re telling me:

Listen, listen, I'm forever saying.

I am listening, but I cannot hear the stars because it is too dark and because I do not know if they are cold. That concerns me, because I prefer them to be warm, to have kind thoughts, to guide me as if I were a navigator.

Maybe I could listen to something closer?

Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,

to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit-

I can do that. I hear all of them now, even if it is pitch black. Even if I can’t taste them. Especially if I can’t taste them. If I were to bite down on them it might hurt, though.

then I come up with a few words, like a gift.

Even as now

Might I ask who just said that? You or I? Perhaps it is both? Tonight, after all, I am saying Mary. Not reading or reciting from memory. I am talking what you do, saying like you do, your words, not ones on the page. Words. Gifts. Something I need now because things are very rough for me. It feels like I’m on the edge of an invisible abyss.

Even as the darkness has remains the pure, deep darkness.

Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,

looking up,

one hot sentence after another.

I am not certain I understand completely what you’re telling me because your verb tenses are swirling slightly while I stand here. I do, however, comprehend how you can find hot sentences while looking at the stars you say are cold. Do you use those sentences like ropes to climb a little closer to them? Or do you need those warm words to protect yourself from the hissing cold? Maybe the same thing happens to you that does to me when I look straight up at the stars: I get very dizzy, my neck locks, I stagger backward. I start to lose my mind. That’s what the dizziness feels like.

I am searching for hot sentences now because here in the north it gets quite cool in the late evening. The darkness makes it even cooler. Outside, but inside, too.

I need help. This darkness is hard and has a scent nobody wants to describe. I think I will wait for morning. Mary will probably be willing to talk a little longer. She has already placed her gift words in the night sky next to the stars, if you’ve noticed. I am certain they will get along splendidly. The sky also has the advantage of being a very large page to write on. You can scratch out as many words as you want and there’s always room for more. That’s something I would like to try. At this point, I really have nothing to lose. I want to lose that nothing which is taking up so much room and crowding me out of my life.

I am truly desperate.

Part Two

The Journey

(Poem attributed to Mary Oliver)

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

This is good advice, however. It is true that earlier in the conversation there were bad words, bad voices, a lot of wordless shouting. I for one couldn’t hear myself think. When the web wraps tight words around you, things can get rough. I have felt that roughness so tightly, so loudly, that it prickled. I needed your advice, Mary, not the empty urgings given by madmen and madwomen. I worked desperately not to become one of them. You knew, didn’t you?

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

Yes, I admit I felt the tugging. My house resembled its own little earthquake, too, which is why I went outside, into the dark yard. I didn’t want it to collapse on me. I didn’t want to collapse.

"Mend my life!"

Each voice cried.

You told me that, for which I am grateful. It was you who knew what my voices were crying, tears streaming down their invisible faces. Visible tears on voices. They wanted exactly what I wanted: a life that wasn’t full of holes, that could prove itself capable of being fixed. You wrote about that, gave me an idea, and I spoke it, so now I am saying precisely what you said, I’m your echo: Mend my life! 

Don’t leave me here to do this alone. You are one of the few who believes in me, who knows that what I am speaking and who is able, willing to help. You knew where the needle and thread were and you gave them to me. My voices are looking much better now that they are mended. The crying doesn’t seep out as much to trickle down their faces now. Things are drying out, the world is easier. 

I am feeling much better. It turns out I am not half bad at stitching. The holes are nearly invisible now, like the voices.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

How was I to know the voices could hurt? Apparently I mistook them for company. Apparently they were blocking out the stars. Remember how I told you I couldn’t hear them? They were there all the time. I just needed to look up more.

However, I ought to point out a minor contradiction: you previously called the stars cold, but now you tell me they burn. I think I know the reason you say this: it is because of those hot sentences you make. You went to them with your words and warmed them. You melted the sky sheets away. That’s something I would not have thought of doing, but it seems to be working. I don’t like having clouded vision. That makes it hard to hear.

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

I like this new world you have steered me toward. It is not so dark, because the stars are there. I am not just standing in my unseeing back yard, feeling the creep of blindness. I am moving on somewhere, looking for my own hot sentences. I will go to the ends of the earth to find them, too. You are the best guide a person could have for it, Mary. This is the trip of my life.

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

As you can see, I am not simply flailing my arms in the night now, acting like a crazy woman who is locked in her back yard. I have been to the stars with you and returned. I feel determined, for the first time in years. Things don’t have to be full of holes. I know that now and am

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life you could save.”

And there you have it! Mary has helped me crawl out of the dark. No, out of the pit that Poe built. Poe, who preferred lightless things his whole life, who had more barriers to being than I have. Who still probably never took his desperate, depressed world out into his back yard to beg for help like I did. Who never made it out alive.

In the course of reading this little story, which was actually rather immense, if you consider that it included the stars in the sky and the world, you may have wondered if I have imagined everything and if I am losing parts of myself as I stride through it. Think about it. This has been a very calm conversation with you and with Mary as well. This has all been just words, not reality. However, I know this is not something that is real: it’s not a mind meandering, stretching, pulling, tearing at the shroud of night. Oh no, it is just something I had to do because I discovered the words had slipped out of my pocket and my heart where they are usually kept. They slid out and, finding the empty me they left behind was the source of my desperation. Now I would like to offer a little advice.

I assume you are human, as I am. We have a way with words that no other being has. They skip, sputter, flicker like lightning bugs, or even like stars. The thing is, if we don’t put the words to good use, they get bored with us. They wither or fly off into far places where we may never find them. I knew where I could find help and it has worked. I have patched and mended, but more than anything have been listening to the ways in which what we say can be attached to the dark, cold, empty spaces. They warm up the atmosphere and remind us of hooves and rivers. They put us in the world, anchoring us in a safe port if needed.

What Mary has taught me is that the world is why we have poetry, but is also the reason why we need it desperately. My advice to you is to go out and find all the hot sentences you can, gather them up and make a huge bonfire. Sing as you watch your flames dance to the stars. Step out of the darkness, out of your own back yard. Look up and live. Turn on the starlight. Stride as deeply as possible, like Mary says. It’s a long journey and it’s time to get started.