Spiritual Sunday
For my wife’s birthday this past week, my mother gave her a copy of Mary Oliver’s Devotions, a collection of poems compiled by the author that capture her vision of the world as sacred space. Oliver often sees owls as symbols of death, and in “White Owl Flies into and Out of the Field” death is seen as “scalding, aortal light.”
When death strikes, the poet tells us, we should greet it with amazement and “let ourselves be carried,/ as through the translucence of mica,/ to the river.” Drawing on imagery of being cleansed in the River Jordan, Oliver says that, with death, we are “washed and washed/ out of our bones.”
What crossing that river means, Oliver says in another poem (“In Blackwater Woods”), “none of us will ever know.” But as in “Blackwater Woods,” in “White Owl” she hints at salvation.
White Owl Flies into and Out of the Field
By Mary Oliver
Coming down
out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel,
or a buddha with wings,
it was beautiful,
and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings —
five feet apart —and the grabbing
thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys
of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes,
to lurk there,
like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:
maybe death
isn’t darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —
as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary
of looking, and looking, and shut our eyes,
not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river
that is without the least dapple or shadow—
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.
