A Meditation on Mary Oliver's Poem "Dogfish"
she said forget the past
We read dogfish and she said she wanted the past to go away.
Alone is something we have all felt. One semester during college, I decided to quit school and go live in Charlottesville, Virginia, where I took classes and worked as an intern at a bookstore called Splintered Light. One Sunday, I had plans to go to church, then go for a hike. At the time, I was reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, so I wanted to get into nature, as they say. Her writing had inspired me to plant myself firmly in the ground of creation, where I could then grow some words.
I woke up, drove to church, and my sails were as empty and dejected as that parking lot. It was Daylight Savings, and no one else was there. I didn’t have time to make friends, and here was my chance. I had a few, but I didn’t know them well enough to go for a hike together, so I resigned myself, and I ventured out alone. That day I saw a mouse try to ride on a boat. I really did. It made me laugh, and I realized I was in the kind of pain that makes laughing feel like a foreign affair.
Like a mouse finding its way with sails, like fish sparkling in the light, a shimmer. The past and its haunting hurts glimmer of a former life. I wanted to lose that memory of that particular Sunday. I was lonely like whoa. But those days of waiting for a spouse pale. This divorce hurts in a more hellish way. I finally stopped crying after sobbing daily for a year. I was so barren, I wanted to scratch my eyes out of their sockets. I would pour over scriptures like Isaiah 62, “No longer will they call you deserted.” Now I cry about once every couple of days. I enter into my wound when I read that someone healed their anxiety, because I’m so far from being healed. I open up the door to the pain in my heart seldomly and with few. Courage, bravery - the only thing that makes me speak now.
We read some poetry together. We read “Dogfish” by Mary Oliver. She writes about the flicker of fish in water, like the memory of our past, the past we want to forget.
Here is an excerpt from the poem. Don’t skip over this. Please read the poem. She talks about wanting to sever herself from the past in a semi-violent display- an explosion like water falling over rocks. She talks about a black, smiling fish with sharp scales. She talks about the tide turning black and white. She talks about, most importantly, the desire to feel ALIVE.
we read mary oliver and she said she wanted the past to go away.
“Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing
kept flickering in with the tide
And looking around
Black as a fisherman’s boot
With a white belly.
If you asked for a picture I would have to draw a smile
Under the perfectly round eyes and above the chin,
Which was rough
As a thousand sharpened nails
And you know
What a smile means,
Don’t you?
I wanted
The past to go away, I wanted
To leave it, like another country; I wanted
My life to close, and open
Like a hinge, like a wing, liked the part of a song
Where it falls
Down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
To hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
Whoever I was, I was
Alive
For a little while.”
Expression makes us feel alive. This is a noteworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: expression makes us feel alive. Yes, I meant to repeat that. This applies to every last human. Last week I drank a strong cup of coffee and it made me want to clean my toilet and go to France equally. I was so awake and alert, either option sounded as appealing. And that is what making art does to the human psyche. It makes us feel alive. Excited. Awake.
We need good poems, rooted in art, tradition, and nature. We need a walk in the woods where wind can’t get us, where light refracts on our hair in triangles. We need a good conversation where minutes tick by like seconds. We need to get our hands muddy, and we need to get so dirty and sweaty we change.
Happiness is something I fought for. Happiness is something I found. Did Mary Oliver help? Absolutely. So did my daily cup of Starbucks house blend. My uniball pen. My Canson journal with good paper. My relationship with my best friend.
I depart leaving behind a blessing. May God inspire you. May nature make you feel alive. May your favorite book find you. May beauty rescue you from your pain. May God heal all your hurts. May grief be a distant memory.
I wanted to rush friendship, as I lived in a new town. I wanted to be queen of the popularity parade. But healing takes the ticking of the clock and so does love.
Later in the poem Oliver states:
“Also I wanted
To be able to love, And we all know
How that one goes don’t we?
Slowly.”
We read a poem and she made the past go away.
Oh how I wish I could quote the poem in its entirety, but you can look it up here.