Mary Oliver. New and Selected Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, 87.
The Kookaburras
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of
their cage, they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
2 comments:
How do I live without allowing what is most precious in me to be buried deep underneath the detritus of daily life? God, please help me to listen to what is trying to grow out of me. Let me not cover it over with the darkness of fear and denial.
This poem speaks to me of the regretful lost opportunities to do good, to open the door for another, not a big thing but a chance lost to be a better, then happier, person.
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