On Losing a House
1. The bumble bees know where their home is. They have memorized every stalk and leaf of the field. They fall from the air at exactly the right place, they crawl under the soft grasses, they enter the darkness humming. 2. Where we will go with our tables and chairs, our bed, our nine thousand books, our TV, PC, VCR, our cat who is sixteen years old? Where will we put down our dishes and our blue carpets, where will we put up our rose-colored, rice-paper shades? 3. We never saw such a beautiful house, though it dipped toward the sea, though it shook and creaked, though it said to the rain: come in! and had a ghost -- at night she rattled the teacups with her narrow hands, then left the cupboard open -- ad once she slipped -- or maybe it wasn't a slip -- and called to our cat, who ran to the empty room. We only smiled. Unwise! Unwise! 4. O, what is money? O, never in our lives have we thought about money. O, we have only a little money. O, now in our sleep we dream of finding money. But someone else already has money. Money, money, money. Someone else can sign the papers, can turn the key. O dark, O heavy, O mossy money. 5. Amazing how the rich don't even hesitate -- up go the sloping rooflines, out goes the garden, down goes the crooked, green tree, out goes the old sink, and the little windows, and there you have it -- a house like any other -- and there goes the ghost, and then another, they glide over the water, away, waving and waving their fog-colored hands. 6. Don't tell us how to love, don't tell us how to grieve, or what to grieve for, or how loss shouldn't sit down like a gray bundle of dust in the deepest pockets of our energy, don't laugh at our belief that money isn't everything, don't tell us how to behave in anger, in longing, in loss, in home- sickness, don't tell us, dear friends. 7. Goodbye, house. Goodbye, sweet and beautiful house, we shouted, and it shouted back, goodbye to you, and lifted itself down from the town, and set off like a packet of clouds across the harbor's blue ring, the tossing bell, the sandy point -- and turned lightly, wordlessly, into the keep of the wind where it floats still -- where it plunges and rises still on the black and dreamy sea. (Mary Oliver, from What Do We Know, 2002 Da Capo Press) Comments are closed.
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