Loons are crying today at the loss of Mary Oliver

Today, we lost a “wisdom thinker” of our time. Mary Oliver, nature’s poet, died today at the age of 83 from lymphoma. Having read many of her poems, I can truly say that her poetic brilliance touched my heart, caused me to wonder, stretched my thinking, and made me appreciate all that Earth has to offer. She was an observer of nature, a person who understood the connections between nature’s wonders and the spiritual world. I only hope that someday, someone inspired by her journey and her poetry fills those large shoes and picks up where she left off. I will read and reread her poetry for the rest of my life.

The New York Times wrote about Mary Oliver on the day of her passing: Mary Oliver, Prize-Winning Poet of the Natural World, Dies at 83.

One of my favorite Mary Oliver poems that challenges us to take care of our home, Earth, and all the creatures that we share this precious place with.  It is not our’s to abuse or misuse.

Lead
by Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.