My Mary Oliver Poem #5: "The Loon on Oak-Head Pond"

 The Loon on Oak-Head Pond

cries for three days, in the gray mist.

cries for the north it hopes it can find.

plunges, and comes up with a slapping pickerel.

blinks its red eye.

cries again.

you come every afternoon, and wait to hear it.

you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines,

in the silence that follows.

as though it were your own twilight.

as though it were your own vanishing song.

This poem was an interesting one to me when I read it for the first time. The second time I read the poem, it resonated so much more deeply. The poem is melancholy, with the Loon crying for days on end--crying at a lost hope it seems, for the north it desires and the food it hungers for. I saw myself in that loon, a reflection back to days of crushed hopes and dreams. A memory of feeling so close to thing I desired most, only to have those hopes and dreams vanish, my desires slipping through my fingers. I know I am not alone in that feeling. It's a common human experience--wanting something so greatly and being absolutely crushed when you don't get all you hope and wish and dream for. Those shattered dreams leading to the flowing of tears. After the cries of lament (which remind me so much of the psalms of lament in the Old Testament of the Bible), my attention shifted to the second half of the poem. It's interesting to me that the author and reader play the role of the observer in this poem, listening to the cries of the loon. In my own reading of this poem, I see the observer (and honestly, myself) looking to nature, to the natural world, to the loon, to identify with our experiences. To see the loon, or other animals, who still cry out in anguish, just as we do. We identify and connect with nature and the wild over these shared experiences and emotions. Our story seemingly interwoven with theirs. Yet, this observer, in the silence and solitude of the forest, finds her inner peace, a reprieve despite the cries that await. I look to the silence and solitude of nature to escape from the turmoil and restlessness that consume my every day. And when I am sorrowful, I often look to nature as my reprieve, to bring a sense of calm and stability back to my life. Surely, I am not the only one.