Hum, Hum | Mary Oliver

by Elouise

Mary Oliver’s poem is as personal as it is blunt. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. My comments follow.

Hum, Hum

1.

One summer afternoon I heard
a looming, mysterious hum
high in the air; then came something

like a small planet flying past—
something

not at all interested in me but on its own
way somewhere, all anointed with excitement:
bees, swarming,

not to be held back.

Nothing could hold them back.

2.

Gannets diving,
Black snake wrapped in a tree, our eyes
meeting.

The grass singing
as it sipped up the summer rain.
The owl in the darkness, that good darkness
under the stars.

The child that was myself, that kept running away
to the also running creek,
to colt’s foot and trilliums,
to the effortless prattle of the birds.

3. Said the Mother

You are going to grow up
and in order for that to happen
I am going to have to grow old
and then I will die, and the blame
will be yours.

4. Of the Father

He wanted a body
so he took mine.
Some wounds never vanish.

Yet little by little
I learned to love my life.

Though sometimes I had to run hard—
Especially from melancholy—
not to be held back.

5.

I think there ought to be
a little music here;
hum, hum.

6.

The resurrection of the morning.
The mystery of the night.
The hummingbird’s wings.
The excitement of thunder.
The rainbow in the waterfall.
Wild mustard, that rough blaze of the fields.

The mockingbird, replaying the songs of his
neighbors.
The bluebird with its unambitious warble
simple yet sufficient.

The shining fish. The beak of the crow.
The new colt who came to me and leaned
against the fence
that I might put my hands upon his warm body
and know no fear.

Also the words of poets
a hundred or hundreds of years dead—
their words that would not be held back.

7.

Oh the house of denial has thick walls
and very small windows
and whoever lives there, little by little,
will turn to stone.

In those years I did everything I could do
and I did it in the dark—
I mean, without understanding.

I ran away.
I ran away again.
Then, again, I ran away.

They were awfully little, those bees,
and maybe frightened,
yet unstoppably they flew on, somewhere,
to live their life.

Hum, hum, hum.

Mary Oliver, A Thousand Mornings, pp. 39-43
© 2012 by NW Orchard, LLC
First published by Penguin Press 2012

I’ve been reading this poem for weeks. I’m not one for walking in the woods or lying in meadows. I am, however, keenly aware that I am not the woman my father intended me to be.

My first attempt to leave home took the form of marriage. Thankfully, I married a man able to stay with me even when life seemed not worth living. It took effort, multiple mistakes, tears that would sink a ship, anger and humiliation before I made a break from my childhood and teenage lives. Both were driven by my father’s insistence that I keep his rules without fail.

Making this break entailed years of personal work. The kind that climbs mountains and walks through forests of more-of-the-same, though with different people and in highly different settings than my home life. Put bluntly, I didn’t know what had been ‘stolen’ from me, or how to retrieve and own it.

In my world of academia, there weren’t any bees humming to encourage me. I did, however, discover excellent friends who stood with me, plus an exceptionally wise psychotherapist.

NEVER think that what you struggle with is ‘small’ or ‘nothing’ to worry about. And NEVER believe that you can get through the struggle without difficult changes in your life.

Thanks for visiting, reading, and daring to be true to the wonderful person you were created to be.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 June 2023
Photo taken by DAFraser in Longwood Garden Meadow, June 2019