A review by novella42
Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays by Mary Oliver

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Peaceful, full of Oliver's signature skill with description that connects two disparate concepts with such ease and elegance, you wonder why you never saw it before. The essay "Bird" broke my heart, but I'm glad I read it.

My favorite, aside from Wild Geese that always makes me cry, was The Kingfisher. No idea if it's okay to share the poem here, but why not?

The Kingfisher

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave 
like a blue flower, in his beak 
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world-so long as you don't mind 
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life 
that doesn't have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves 
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher 
wasn't born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water 
remains water-hunger is the only story 
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don't say he's right. Neither 
do I say he's wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf 
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry 
I couldn't rouse out of my thoughtful body 
if my life depended on it, he swings back 
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it 
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Injury/Injury detail