Poetry Friday 2 - Consider the Lilies
Here is another Mary Oliver, just because I have been reading poetry during lunch. I really like this poem. Here's how I interpret it, briefly: I think it is definitely alludes to Matthew 6:25-34, with the speaker wondering whether she could live like the lilies (trusting God to protect and provide) and forget herself or would she always be wanting something more and waiting for it (here the hummingbird). That being the case, she supposes she will always be lonely, because she's unable to trust "without protest" and because ultimately "whenever there is a fuss" the hummingbird that she has her hopes in rises and floats away. What do you think?
Lilies
Mary Oliver
I have been thinking
about living
like the lilies
that blow in the fields.
They rise and fall
in the edge of the wind,
and have no shelter
from the tongues of the cattle,
and have no closets or cupboards,
and have no legs.
Still I would like to be
as wonderful
as the old idea.
But if I were a lily
I think I would wait all day
for the green face
of the hummingbird
to touch me.
What I mean is,
could I forget myself
even in those feathery fields?
When Van Gogh
preached to the poor
of coarse he wanted to save someone--
most of all himself.
He wasn't a lily,
and wandering through the bright fields
only gave him more ideas
it would take his life to solve.
I think I will always be lonely
in this world, where the cattle
graze like a black and white river--
where the vanishing lilies
melt, without protest, on their tongues--
where the hummingbird, whenever there is a fuss,
just rises and floats away.