Patience

I have a good friend who, in times of crisis, swears by opening the nearest volume of poems and finding some form of answer or reprieve in whatever work you land on.  Happenstance and fate joining hands, a union of need and serendipity.  

Today two of my dearest friends began journeys, one spiritual and one physical.  In my struggle to know how to give them assistance, I tried out the aforementioned technique.  The book, New and Selected Poems Volume 2 of Mary Oliver.  The poem: Patience.  Imagine my utter shock to have wandered into those pages and come out not with a poem that is right for my friends, but one that is so utterly perfect for me.  

I struggle, often, with patience, with the letting go and letting God/the universe/the angels of our better nature.  I feel a deep joy when I wallow in some semblance of control, but of late I have noticed that is all it is--my control is nothing more than a charade, a glittery blue pool on the horizon of 110 degree day that, once approached, proves to be only sand.  So, today's poem is fitting in that I must try to stop controlling my own life, stop thinking there is a perfect word or thought or deed to accompany the events in my life and instead to breathe, to wait, to trust that what should be will be, whether I will it or not.

Patience, Mary Oliver

What is the good life now? Why,

look here, consider

the moon's white crescent

rounding, slowly, over

the half month to still another

perfect circle-

the shining eye

that lightens the hills,

that lays down the shadows

of the branches of the trees,

that summons the flowers

to open their sleepy faces and look up

into the heavens.

I used to hurry everywhere,

and leaped over the running creeks.

There wasn't

time enough for all the wonderful things

I could think of to do

in a single day. Patience

comes to the bones

before it take root in the heart

as another good idea.

I say this

as I stand in the woods

and study the patterns

of the moon shadows,

or stroll down into the waters

that now, late summer, have also

caught the fever, and hardly move

from one eternity to another.