It was maybe a year ago that I first read the poem “A Settlement” by Mary Oliver.
Someone had sent around just the last few lines as Instagram art and it was arresting. It leveled me. The words reverberated in me. They caught me and held me. It was when I googled them that I encountered the full poem, which only amplified the impact.
And so dark past . . .
Months later I realized that the author wasn’t unknown to me. I’d read her before. I’d loved her words before. But, like I said, that wasn’t until months later. She’s the author of the very well known poem The Summer Day, which I am glad I never have to live without.
Mary Oliver is prolific. She’s written so much, and not every poem is a stand-out gem. Like, she had a bestseller that was all poems about dogs.
Dogs.
For me, the truly life-changing poems of Mary Oliver are like needles in a very big haystack.
But you know, that just makes me love her more for showing me that my own ratio of haystacks to needles is nothing to be ashamed of. I am up to my eyebrows in haystacks while praying for needles.
Here it is, that amazing gem, a proverbial needle in a haystack.
Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow, happiness, music, ambition.
And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my mind.
*
Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you
for everything.
“A Settlement” by Mary Oliver