Red Bird: Poems by Mary Oliver

Eleven Versions of the Same Poem:
Am I lost?
Am I lost?
    I don’t think so.
Do I know where I am?
    I’m not sure.
Have I ever been happier in my life?
    Never.
Am I lost?
    I am lost.
Do I know where I am?
    I am lost.
Have I ever been more joyful in my life?
    I am lost.
I don’t want to live a small life
I don’t want to live a small life. Open your eyes,
open your hands. I have just come
from the berry fields, the sun
kissing me with its golden mouth all the way
(open your hands) and the wind-winged clouds
following along thinking perhaps I might
feed them, but no I carry these heart-shapes
only to you. Look how many how small
but so sweet and maybe the last gift
I will ever bring to anyone in this
world of hope and risk, so do.
Look at me. Open your life, open your hands.
I am the one
I am the one
who took your hand
when you offered it to me.
I am the pledge of emptiness
that turned around.
Even the trees smiled.
Always I was the bird
that flew off through the branches.
Now
I am the cat
with feathers
under its tongue.
Now comes the long blue cold
Now comes the long blue cold
and what shall I say but that some
bird in the tree of my heart
is singing.
That same heart that only yesterday
was a room shut tight, without dreams.
Isn’t it wonderful—the cold wind and
spring in the heart inexplicable.
Darling girl. Picklock.
So every day
So every day
I was surrounded by the beautiful crying forth
of the ideas of God,
one of which was you.
If the philosopher is right
If the philosopher is right,
that all we are
and all the earth around us
is only a dream,
even if a bright, long dream—
that everything is nothing
but what sits in the mind,
that the trees, that the red bird
are all in the mind,
and the river, and the sea in storm
are all in the mind,
that nothing exists fierce or soft or apt to be
    truly shaken—
nothing tense, wild, sleepy—nothing
like Yeats’ girl with the yellow hair—
then you too are a dream
which last night and the night before that
    and the years before that
you were not.
There you were, and it was like spring
There you were, and it was like spring—
like the first fair water with the light on it,
    hitting the eyes.
Why are we made the way we are made, that to love
    is to want?
Well, you are gone now, and this morning I have walked out
    to the back shore,
to the ocean which, even if we think we have measured it,
    has no final measure.
Sometimes you can see the great whales there,
    breaching and playing.
Sometimes the swans linger just long enough
    for us to be astonished.
Then they lift their wings, they become again
    a part of the untouchable clouds.
Where are you?
Where are you?
Do you know that the heart has a dungeon?
Bring light! Bring light!
I wish I loved no one
I wish I loved no one,
I said, one long day.
You are a fool then,
said the old cripple
from the poorhouse.
You are a fool then,
said the young woman
tramping the road
with nothing, nothing.
I wish I loved no one,
I said on yet another long day.
You are a fool then,
said a wrinkled face
at the boarding house.
And she laughed.
A pitiful fool!
I will try
I will try.
I will step from the house to see what I see
and hear and I will praise it.
I did not come into this world
to be comforted.
I came, like red bird, to sing.
But I’m not red bird, with his head-mop of flame
and the red triangle of his mouth
full of tongue and whistles,
but a woman whose love has vanished,
who thinks now, too much, of roots
and the dark places
where everything is simply holding on.
But this too, I believe, is a place
where God is keeping watch
until we rise, and step forth again and—
but wait. Be still. Listen!
Is it red bird? Or something
inside myself, singing?
What is the greatest gift?
    What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself—the oceans, the meadowlark,
    the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its