On observations

OF MARY

As geese fly overhead,

I read the news of your passing,

Mary Oliver, the trees bend their heads to honor you, our mountains reach their arms to the sky in hopes of reaching your precious face, your wisdom of time passing is here on this plain of brown soybeans and dreams,

Did you carry a poem from this your “wild and precious life” across the River Styx,

Did the ferryman demand bronze coins from your eyes like new pennies or acorns from a great oak tree,

Can we carry you with us into the woods,

a poem in a pocket, faded, wrinkled, loud and soft like cotton,

Is passing on like clouds parting?

Are you waiting for a song, a melody, harmonies of old dogs and lovers,

Are there sequoia trees beyond this mud, this broken earth,

“I must learn to weep, “ you say as the tide brings foam and kelp to Provincetown,

stones shine,

glassy sand,

koi fish swim for a passing hand is feeding their orange heads,

You were very much here, Mary,

to the bone,

you have left us, but not untouched, unmoved,

But so shaken with the beauty of it all.