Welcome back, friends!

Ready to guess WHO-WHO-WHO is Mystery Person #3 on my Wall of Fame? She’s a great one!

I’d heard about her for a long time and knew one or two of her creations, but a recent personal struggle of mine prompted me to reach for her hand, and I’m so glad I did. As I might’ve already told you, I’m afraid I’ve been engaged in a torrid love affair with my phone that’s not good for either of us. (Well, my phone probably likes it.)

Anyway, I tried to break up, but just about every evening, as soon as Todd started snoring beside me, that sly thing would lure me right back. Before I knew it, I’d find myself on Facebook, entranced by stupid stories full of ads for airport outfits that you can wad up and wear without ironing and make-up that won’t cake on mature skin. I can stop anytime I want, I’d whisper, holding my phone with a death grip.

I needed someone to save me. Someone positive. Someone wholesome and peaceful. Someone who’d capture my heart so completely that I’d be willing to set my phone free to the nightstand.

I hear you. Why not read a novel? Aren’t you always harping about how middle grade novels (the ones written for 8-12 year olds) are hilarious and deeply meaningful, that they foster empathy and help us understand ourselves, even when we’re nearly 62 years old? 

Yes, middle grade novels do all those things… except when you’re trying to get one published and it’s not going so hot. Then reading them only makes you jealous and itchy and likely to spit at the perfectly awesome people who write them.

Sorry, I know you only stopped by to meet Mystery Person #3. We’re almost there…

So I asked myself, what could I read that would not make me want to throw things? What books might lift my heart and make me want to be a better person? (I hear you over there, Church Lady. For your information, I read the Bible nearly every day, but a person can’t live by bread alone. Well, maybe you can, but I don’t want to.)

Anyway, I asked myself those questions, and ZAP! Mystery Person #3 and her poetry electrified my brain! I bet you’d recognize some lines from her most popular poems. Maybe you know her better than I do.

If you love snooty poetry, you might be rolling your eyes right now because she’s so popular and successful and not at all fancy. I love her poems because they take me right back to my 1970’s childhood, when the neighborhood kids and my brother and I would roam the woods unsupervised, swinging on vines like Tarzan over the creek and sucking honeysuckle nectar.

Hey, speaking of honeysuckle, I spy some in her portrait.

My Mystery Person wrote about it, as well as the bees. Hum is one of my favorite poems ever. She writes that the bees “have gone simple, sipping, that’s all. What did you expect? Sophistication? They’re small creatures and they are filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not moan in happiness?”   And later, several lines down, “…it’s love almost too fierce to endure, the bee nuzzling like that into the blouse of the rose.”

Nuzzling into the blouse of the rose? My phone’s getting jealous!

She’s called herself a praise poet, which I think is accurate.

There’s also a lightning bug crawling up her shirt. Sorry to boss you around, but you really should read her poem, Fireflies. Here are a few lines:  “At Blackwater fireflies are not even a dime a dozen–they are free, and each floats and turns among the branches of the oaks and the swamp azaleas looking for another as, who doesn’t? Oh, blessings on the intimacy inside fruition, be it foxes or the fireflies…” She writes on about how Eden remains in our imagination…”he would take her in a boat over the dark water; she would take him to an island she knows” …”where the birds perch together, feather to feather, on the bough. And the fireflies, blinking their little lights, hurry toward one another. And the world continues, God willing.”

Ahh. So beautiful!

Look, there she is, Mystery Person #3, peeking at us with her pretty blue eyes. I added purple violets because they remind me of her poem, Children, It’s Spring “And this is the lady whom everyone loves, Ms. Violet in her purple gown, or on special occasions, a dress the color of sunlight. She sits in the mossy weeds and waits to be noticed…

Of course she needs an orange tiger lily too. In Tiger Lilies, she writes of those flowers that they “were not disappointed when they saw the scissors, rather they braced themselves sweetly and shone with willingness. They were on tall and tender poles, with wheels of leaves. They were soft as the ears of kittens.” She adds that she held them in her arms.  “If they wondered where they were going they didn’t show it, as they sprinkled freely over my shirt and my hands their precious gold dust.”

Recognize her yet?

She was born in 1935 in Ohio and died in 2019. She won the Pulitzer Prize (1984) and the National Book Award (1992.) In later interviews, she said that she turned to the natural world to cope with an abusive childhood, that she was saved by the beauty of the world. And now she’s saving the rest of us!

Need another clue? This might help…

I had to paint some Wild Geese since that’s the first poem of hers I ever loved. It’s the one that opens, “You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” And then later, “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Oh Mary, you’re a treasure!

Yes, it’s Mary Oliver!

I’ve given her a living tiara of some of the things and creatures she loved. Some of her poems are written in the sky behind her. Click on her portrait for a better look if you like.

Thanks, Mary Oliver. I still scroll my phone sometimes, but I know you’re right there at my bedside, waiting to lift my heart whenever I’m ready!

If you’re curious to learn more about Mary, you’re in luck. Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World,  a documentary on her work and her life, comes out on PBS, August 25. I can’t wait!

And if you would like a recommendation for which book of hers to try, I’m reading this one over and over.

Thanks for stopping by, friend!

🙂 Becky

PS. Also, read In Pobiddy, Georgia, if you’re willing. It’s different from her others, but it is striking and beautiful!