Last week, in the midst of all my potato chip reviewing, I completely forgot that April was National Poetry Month. (Even Taylor Swift paid homage with her latest album release!)

So, for this week’s Editor’s Corner, I would like to atone for my forgetfulness by sharing some of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets: Mary Oliver. I was first introduced to Mary Oliver in my junior year of high school during a poetry unit, and I was not disappointed. Oliver’s works are deeply rooted in the intricacies of nature and wildlife, offering readers a unique way to view both the outer world and others around them. 

(Also, this week one of my colleagues said to me in an email that he doesn’t take poems in his newspaper as letters to the editor, saying that his paper “ain’t a literary journal”. My beloved readers, I am the complete opposite: if anyone has poems that they’d like to share with the Bryan County News, I’d love to publish them! Just as long as you don’t use ChatGPT to write them…).

In Blackwater Woods

by Mary Oliver

Look, the trees

are turning

their own bodies

into pillars

of light,

are giving off the rich

fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers

of cattails

are bursting and floating away over

the blue shoulders

of the ponds,

and every pond,

no matter what its

name is, is

nameless now.

Every year

everything

I have ever learned

in my lifetime

leads back to this: the fires

and the black river of loss

whose other side

is salvation,

whose meaning

none of us will ever know.

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

The Storm

By Mary Oliver

Now through the white orchard my little dog

romps, breaking the new snow

with wild feet.

Running here running there, excited,

hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

until the white snow is written upon

in large, exuberant letters,

a long sentence, expressing

the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better

myself.