Sometimes the right poem appears at the right time. This past week I referenced the inspiration of the Heron Foundation, which got me thinking about the avian kind of herons, and at the same time I was pondering the weirdness of spring, how is it light and emergent and yet full of heavy and seemingly impossible things…. change is good! change is hard!  To top it all off, my family is celebrating Easter this weekend, a most joyful and most incredible holiday.

…and then in comes Mary Oliver, right on cue.

So heavy

is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,

always it is a surprise

when her smoke-colored wings

open

and she turns

from the thick water,

from the black sticks

of the summer pond,

and slowly

rises into the air

and is gone.

Then, not for the first or the last time,

I take the deep breath

of happiness, and I think

how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,

how improbable

that ascension is not possible,

though everything seems so inert, so nailed

back into itself–

the muskrat and his lumpy lodge,

the turtle,

the fallen gate.

And especially it is wonderful

that the summers are long

and the ponds so dark and so many,

and therefore it isn’t a miracle

but the common thing,

this decision,

this trailing of the long legs in the water,

this opening up of the heavy body

into a new life: see how the sudden

gray-blue sheets of her wings

strive toward the wind; see how the clasp of nothing

takes her in.

Dear Honeybees, as we take in this new season with all its impossibilities, may all of your miracles be common things.

* You are right, this photo is not a heron, it’s a stork! But I like the taking-off-impossibly image.  From Sabi Sands, South Africa, 2016.

** You can (and should) read this poem in full context in the volume What Do We Know?  — and a terrific interview between Mary Oliver and Krista Tippett can be found at OnBeing.

*** Have you seen our big news?! Honeybee is continuing, but there is just a little time left if you would like to support our work.