The Journey
By Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice, “mend my life, mend my life, 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 the 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 thin 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 that you could do, determined to save the only life that you could save. ~
What’s this I see? A Mary Oliver poem with NO COMMENTS attached? How could this be? I have never been on a blog before, and have certainly never posted to one, but “The Journey” is too good to pass up. Carrie, I love that you posted this piece with nothing attached–no advice, no interpretation, no “angle” on the message or the meaning. To me, this has always been the very point of the poem (this literal poem, as well as the figurative poem that is our lives): ultimately, our journeys are our own–MUST be our own–no matter whom we share them with. Our interpretation of the events of our lives is, in a sense, the only interpretation that matters, and it’s the only interpretation that will move us to action and change. This poem says to me that the journey is not easy, but that our movement through it is beautiful because it is ours. I’m in a workshop this week, with people talking about literature and teaching high school students–this poem reminds me of how (who said this?) it is literature that keeps us human. And why we must read it, to understand ourselves. Thanks.