MARY OLIVER
Of all the poets I admire
only one did I envy
How she could take us all on her journey
remind us of the wild beauty of our lives
and the soft animal of our bodies
It is disowned parts of us I know
that we hold too high or low
And yet I wanted to go where she could go
This year in the merry month of May
on a trip in search of other things
a book I didn’t know she’d written
in a town where I didn’t know she lived
I hung five days like her hummingbird
on the green wheel of its wings
Her flowers were my food
her town became my town
her dunes became my dunes
Sip by sip on that Cape Cod shore
I began to envy her less
and love her more
And that pretty green stone
I was taking with me
I threw it back into the sea