#sleepingintheforest

“I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly…” - Sleeping in the Forest, Mary Oliver

Late last night I was lying in bed, surfing aimlessly on my tablet and feeling sorry for myself about some stupid thing when I suddenly had the urge to look up Mary Oliver’s poetry.* And that’s when I learned she had died that very day.

83 years. An amazing and prolific life! Her writing has such an effortlessly lyrical and warm quality to me, and when I read them I often feel, “That’s true.” or “I wish that to be true.” Her poetry helped shape my philosophy when I was younger, including the philosophy behind Now Recharging. I love so many of her poems and couldn’t possibly pick just one. I thought about illustrating a piece of When Death Comes, which is a wonderful poem, but in the end I went with the opening of Sleeping in the Forest. I’ve always found it particularly comforting. Thank you, Mary Oliver - I hope that cottage of darkness surpasses your expectations in the best way possible. You certainly didn’t simply visit this world. * (Whenever I’m in particularly bad blahs, reading A Bitterness always seems to make me feel better for some reason)

Sleeping In The Forest

Mary Oliver 

-

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.