Hurricane | Mary Oliver

by Elouise

Mary Oliver’s hurricane has been on my mind for the last few weeks. There’s so much we can’t predict or count on these days. Not only in nature, but in human experience and global disasters. It doesn’t matter how centered we may be, or how ‘safe’ we think we are. My comments follow.

Hurricane

It didn’t behave
like anything you had
ever imagined. The wind
tore at the trees, the rain
fell for days slant and hard.
The back of the hand
to everything. I watched
the trees bow and their leaves fall
and crawl back into the earth.
As though, that was that.
This was one hurricane
I lived through, the other one
was of a different sort, and
lasted longer. Then
I felt my own leaves giving up and
falling. The back of the hand to
everything. But listen now to what happened
to the actual trees;
toward the end of that summer they
pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs.
It was the wrong season, yes,
but they couldn’t stop. They
looked like telephone poles and didn’t
care. And after the leaves came
blossoms. For some things
there are no wrong seasons.
Which is what I dream of for me.

Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings
Published in 2013 by Penguin Books, pp. 21-22
© 2012 by NW Orchard LL.C.

I’m making it up, one day at a time. I never thought I would be faced with so many decisions. Some feasible; a precious few doable. The trees showed Mary the way. Don’t let the goblins scare you. And don’t give up.

Forget about right and wrong seasons of life. Grab what’s available now, and love with all your heart. Forget what others think. They don’t own your body or your soul. This too is a gift from above. Especially when things are bleak.

My health has an unpredictable mind of its own these days. Still, I want nothing more than the opportunity to be my real self before I die, regardless of impossibly “correct” rules or regulations. No fear. No anger toward myself or others. Just the right season to blossom before the next right season arrives.

Thank you for visiting and reading. I pray all is well with each of you, no matter what the weather.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 23 January 2023
Photo found at pixabay.com.