cancer Archives - Owl Medicine: Shamanic Healing

Mary Oliver – 9/10/35 – 1/17/19

I feel an undeniable resonance with Mary Oliver’s love affair with Mother Nature. The way in which her words reflect my own yearning to hear the stories and know the essence of All Life makes my heart both ache and sing.

The following poem felt like it was speaking to me today, and I want to share it with you. Surely she knew we would be reading it this very day? One day after her soul broke free of the cocoon lately stalked by the fourth sign of the zodiac? By every word, it feels that way to me.

The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

– by Mary Oliver

Why should I have been surprised?

Hunters walk the forest

without a sound.

The hunter, strapped to his rifle,

the fox on his feet of silk,

the serpent on his empire of muscles –

all move in a stillness,

hungry, careful, intent.

Just as the cancer

entered the forest of my body,

without a sound.

The question is,

what will it be like

after the last day?

Will I float

into the sky

or will I fray

within the earth or a river—

remembering nothing?

How desperate I would be

if I couldn’t remember

the sun rising, if I couldn’t

remember trees, rivers; if I couldn’t

even remember, beloved,

your beloved name.

I know, you never intended to be in this world.

But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.

There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.

Bless the eyes and the listening ears.

Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.

Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.

Or not.

I am speaking from the fortunate platform

of many years,

none of which, I think, I ever wasted.

Do you need a prod?

Do you need a little darkness to get you going?

Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,

and remind you of Keats,

so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,

he had a lifetime.

Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,

all the fragile blue flowers in bloom

in the shrubs in the yard next door had

tumbled from the shrubs and lay

wrinkled and fading in the grass. But

this morning the shrubs were full of

the blue flowers again. There wasn’t

a single one on the grass. How, I

wondered, did they roll or crawl back

to the shrubs and then back up to

the branches, that fiercely wanting,

as we all do, just a little more of

life?

photo by backyardgardenlover.com

(T-1043)

Sudden Sadness

Karl and I just safely arrived home from Massachusetts a short while ago.

Knowing I needed to write my post for the day, I logged onto my laptop. (My MacBook Air, for those of you who might be wondering. I will deal with Dell tomorrow.)

I clicked on Face Book almost without thinking, and the very first post that showed up on my feed was something from a dear friend from high school.

Her Use of the Past Tense Said It All

As soon as I started reading it, I noticed her use of past tense when referring to her brother, giving me a terrible, hollow feeling in my heart.

I didn’t know Mike – not really. He was a presence, but I was not; so he didn’t bother with me – as is not uncommon with older brothers in general, especially when they’re somewhat close in age, but just out of range, so to speak. But I knew ‘of’ him, and over the course of the recent years of FB, I’d gotten a taste of his sense of humor and loveable-bearness.

But Ann’s use of the past tense, and her description of the past two weeks – yes, only TWO WEEKS – before losing him this morning to an apparently lightning-swift or long undiagnosed cancer is stunning and heartbreaking.

And so I am once again left wanting to comfort, to console, to make sense of how devastatingly quickly any of our lives can change through loss or end.

I am glad for him that he did not linger or suffer. And I am beyond sad for the grief and loss of my dear friend Ann and her sister Jane.