Mary Oliver's poem regarding Dream Work

Poetry from Mary Oliver’s Dream work.

DREAMS

All night

the dark buds of dreams

open richly.

In the center

of every petal

is a letter, and you imagine

if you could only remember

and string them all together

they would spell the answer.

It is a long night,

and not an easy one—

you have so many branches,

and there are diversions—

birds that come and go,

the black fox that lies down

to sleep beneath you,

the moon staring

with her bone-white eye.

Finally you have spent

all the energy you can

and you drag from the ground

the muddy skirt of your roots

and leap awake

with two or three syllables

like water in your mouth

and a sense

of loss—a memory

not yet of a word,

certainly not yet the answer—

only how it feels

when deep in the tree

all the locks click open,

and the fire surges through the wood,

and the blossoms blossom.

(Oliver, 1986, pp. 18-19)

THE JOURNEY

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice—

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

“Mend my life!”

each voice cried.

But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations—

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

As you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice,

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do—

determined to save

the only life you could save.

(Oliver, 1986, pp. 38-39)

RAGE

You are the dark song

 of the morning;

serious and slow,

you shave, you dress,

you descend the stairs

in your public clothes

and drive away, you become

the wise and powerful one

who makes all the days

possible in the word.

But you were also the red song

in the night,

stumbling through the house

to the child’s bed,

to the damp rose of her body,

leaving your bitter taste.

And forever those nights snarl

the delicate machinery of the days.

When the child’s mother smiles

you see on her cheekbones

a truth you will never confess;

and you see how the child grows—

timidly, crouching in the corners.

Sometimes in the wide night

you hear the most mournful cry,

a ravished and terrible moment.

In your dreams she’s a tree that will never come to leaf—

in your dreams she’s a watch

you dropped on the dark stones

till no one could gather the fragments—

in your dreams you have sullied and murdered,

and dreams do not lie.

(Oliver, 1986, pp. 12-13)

References

Oliver, M. (1986). Dream work. New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press.