Monday, March 7, 2011

4: Sleeping in the Forest by Mary Oliver

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

I've studied Mary Oliver's poems before and I picked this one because I haven't ever read it before. Mary Oliver is a transcendentalist and most of her poems are about nature. This particular one seems to be about sleeping on the forest floor. In the first few lines she is conveying that she is in one with nature so that she feels completely comfortable just lying down on the earth of the forest like nature is an entity and they are old friends. This makes me wish I felt that way about nature.
The last few lines make me think that while sleeping she became one with mother nature in spirit and in mind. It's about the "luminous doom" of having to wake up and be separated once more from nature. This is how I feel about sleep in general, which is that waking up means I have to go back to reality which isn't as sweet as feeling like you're being part of the world, with your mind shut down. To think of it that way could also mean a symbolism of death. As you shut down your body, you become one with the very nature that made you a separate entity.

3 comments:

  1. what is compared to "a stone/on the riverbed"?where else does that imagery appear in the poem?

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    Replies
    1. she is comparing herself while she is sleeping like a stone on the riverbed this image appears again when she said she rose and fell as if in water.

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