Looking and Touching and Loving

Bone

1.

Understand, I am always trying to figure out

what the soul is,

and where hidden,

and what shape -

and so, last week,

when I found on the beach

the ear bone

of a pilot whale that may have died

hundreds of years ago, I thought

maybe I was close

to discovering something -

for the ear bone

2.

is the portion that lasts longest

in any of us, man or whale; shaped

like a squat spoon

with a pink scoop where

once, in the lively swimmer’s head,

it joined its two sisters

in the house of hearing,

it was only

two inches long -

and thought: the soul

might be like this -

so hard, so necessary -

3.

yet almost nothing.

Beside me

the gray sea

was opening and shutting its wave-doors,

unfolding over and over

its time-ridiculing roar;

I looked but I couldn’t see anything

through its dark-knit glare;

yet don’t we all know, the golden sand

is there at the bottom,

though our eyes have never seen it,

nor can our hands ever catch it

4.

lest we would sift it down

into fractions, and facts -

certainties -

and what the soul is, also

I believe I will never quite know.

Though I play at the edges of knowing,

truly I know

our part is not knowing,

but looking, and touching, and loving,

which is the way I walked on,

softly,

through the pale-pink morning light.

~ Mary Oliver ~

(Why I Wake Early)

___________

On this rainy Los Angeles morning, these words touch me: Looking and Touching and Loving.

The words are not “Fixing and Pushing and Yearning.”  They are Looking and Touching and Loving. This is our job. Looking at what is before us – not judging, not trying to see something different, not straining. But seeing the simplicity of what is present.

Our job is touching. I touch my son’s soft blonde head, my daughter’s cheek, my husband’s hand. It’s a touch of love.

Our job is loving. Loving everything. Loving the wretchedness. Loving the weight of sadness I feel this morning. Loving the bewilderment we sometimes feel as life unfolds.

When we love, we open. We let something in. We receive it and we hold it. We don’t repress it, smash it, belittle it.

Mary Oliver is remarkable in how she offers herself to the natural world with such humility and devotion. She has no need to be anywhere but where she is with complete openness and wonder and awe.  She is my inspiration to live simply and with great gratitude–Looking and Touching and Loving.