Devotion

on reading Mary Oliver after her death

What is there beyond knowing
you asked, walking in your woods
with its notebooks and pencils
hidden behind the bark in so many trees,
and by the seashore, digging your heels
into the forgiving sand,
and looking up into the sky
at the wild geese, and into the love
of your one wild and precious life,
that life full of its modesty and grace,
that life where in poem after poem
you showed the rest of us
the real prayers are not the words
but the attention that comes first,
and that to be beautiful
is also to be simple and brief,
always willing to be dazzled,
always with the faith that the soul
at last must be like this – so hard,
so necessary – yet almost nothing,
for unless we have faith that heaven
is very near, how will we find it?

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