Spiritual Sunday
It took me years to realize that Mary Oliver’s poetry is shaped by her religious view of the world. Now that I am alert to this, and now that I know of her Episcopalian background, it seems self-evident. For instance, I now read “Bobcat” as an Advent poem.
Oliver describes herself and her companion unexpectedly spotting a bobcat on a night drive. For one who loves nature as much as Oliver does, that sighting has the force of miraculous revelation. Not only does her heart thud and stop at the sight of “those lightning eyes! that dappled jaw! those plush paws!” but she is put in mind of how, in the far north, the lynx lounges “in trees/ as thick as castles,/ as cold as iron.” In other words, in the darkest and most forbidding of landscapes, light blazes forth.
And then, like Robert Frost, Oliver finds a message in the moment, which in this case is an Advent message. We can think, if we want, that the “truth of the world” is “the miles alone in the pinched dark.” That does in fact appear to be our reality much of the time. But in this miraculous moment, she senses the Christmas vision: “the push of promise” and, because that hope renders us vulnerable, “the wound of delight.”
When we’ve had that experience, the world is no longer dark. Instead, “as though in a dream,”
we drive
toward the white forest
all day,
all night.
Here’s the poem:
Bobcat
By Mary Oliver
One night
long ago,
in Ohio,
a bobcat leaped
like a quick
clawed
whirlwind of light
from the pines
beside the road
and our hearts
thudded and
stopped–
those lightning eyes!
that dappled jaw!
those plush paws!
In the north,
we’ve heard,
the lynx
wanders like silk
on the deep
hillsides of snow–
blazing,
it lounges in trees
as thick as castles,
as cold as iron.
What should we say
is the truth of the world?
The miles alone
in the pinched dark?
or the push of the promise?
or the wound of delight?
As though in a dream
we drive
toward the white forest
all day,
all night.
