Stars

Here in my head, language

Keeps making its tiny noises.

How can I hope to be friends

with the hard white stars

whose flaring and hissing

are not speech

but a pure radiance?

How can I hope to be friends

with the yawning spaces

between them

where nothing, ever, is

spoken?

Tonight, at the edge of the

field,

I stood very still, and looked

up,

and tried to be empty of

words.

What joy was it, that almost

found me?

What amiable peace?

Then it was over, the wind

roused up in the oak trees

behind me

and I fell back, easily.

Earth has a hundred

thousand pure contraltos--

even the distant night bird

as it talks threat, as it talks

love

over the cold, black fields.

Once, deep in the woods,

I found the white skull of a

bear

and it was utterly silent--

and once a river otter, in a

steel trap,

and it too was utterly silent.

What can we do

but keep on breathing in and out,

modest and willing, and in

our places?

Listen, listen, I'm forever

saying,

Listen to the river, to the

hawk, to the hoof

to the mockingbird, to the

jack-in-the-pulpit--

then I come up with a few

words, like a gift.

Even as now.

Even as the darkness has

remained the pure, deep

darkness.

Even as the stars have

twirled a little, while I stood

here,

looking up,

one hot sentence after

another.

~Mary Oliver