Mary Oliver is dead - Your Impossible Voice

Mary Oliver is dead

and I want to know

did she ever watch the gulls at Race Point hang

on nothing but invention,

moving a little up,

a little down,

strung on thread,

and did she ever feel not

the invisible force of poetry or love or being

held in a net of earthly connection,

but instead the vast mathematics

of vacant spaces

hung between even greater

voids—emptiness spread like butter

over this whole enterprise.

Every morning I used to pray

and, no lie, the gaze of the ocean-maker

was what I felt.

            I didn't turn my back.

If there’s a lamp

moving over my face, I can’t tell.

- Published in Your Impossible Voice Issue 24 Spring 2021 (nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes)