Mary Oliver’s works as a poet and a writer have left indelible impressions on me. When I learned that she had died today, I felt a stab of grief, followed by a feeling of joy at all she, this person whom I never met, had given to me through her work. I know that many, many people feel the same way.

Tonight, I want to share two sharp memories of moments when her work intertwined with my life, enriching and deepening it. The first is when I read to my students her justly famous poem, “Wild Geese,” at the end of one of my yoga classes. Here is a link to the complete poem. It is a poem about accepting life in a body–your own body, just as it is–and ends with an up-rush of sheer ecstasy for being alive, right now, in this minute. If you have a moment,  read it again (or for the first time.) That day back in the autumn of 2001, after reading it, I could hear geese on the wing not far away, sailing over the Cannon River.

The other memory is of a trip to Bayfield, WI with family. We were still new to homeschooling. I had brought Mary Oliver’s Selected Poems with me. Julia and Tim and I read a number of them aloud in the quiet and natural beauty of the Bayfield Pennisula, near the Apostle Islands, each of us responding in our own ways. That is a place where we have often seen bears near the side of the the road, crossing from one part of the forest to the other, and so I was especially taken, that day, with her poem, “Spring.”  The evocation of a newly awakened bear still thrills me each time I read this poem, or even when I just imperfectly remember it.

There are many beautifully written obituaries for her online, including this one from
The New York Times. I am grateful that she was who she was, and also that she broke her privacy to share, through her work, her clear and passionate observations of the natural world and the human pysche with all of us.

Leslie

Heartfelt thanks to my sister, Karla Schultz, for these amazing photographs of wild geese near Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin–and for taking the time to find them in her vast archives on short notice so I could share them here.