The idea appealed to me instantly. Over two added minutes per days! And so I set about preparing a reading of poems from Oliver, my favorite poet. Once committed, I wondered, as we all do, what now? I began to read. Which, I reminded myself as I walked down into the town commons on a cold afternoon, is a gift akin to walking.
Linear lines of words; slightly wandering lines of footprints. The walker and the writer and the reader know each other as siblings. Poets and walkers exhibit patience when they do their work well, and I knew that Mary Oliver, who died in after a distinguished writing career, was among the most patient foot-people. Her habit of going out every morning into the pre-dawn brought her visions and contact elusive to most of us.
But beyond her devotion to early hours, which promised an absence of other people, Oliver had an astonishing ability to remain quiet and observant. To the point where the other lives abroad in that world often simply noted her presence and kept on with their lives unbothered. The hush that we occasion on arrival in a wild place began to fill in with songs, voices, padded steps, perhaps the whisper of curiosity.
Few of us from our apex-predator species can say the same. All of this returned to me as I prepared my talk. In a variety of settings, for more than 40 years, I had stood before, sat among and walked with students, almost all of them teenagers.
Almost always attentive, they were also a wild bunch β¦ simply by nature, and over time, I felt my presence and teaching shift. As you may guess, I lectured infrequently, but I read aloud often, asked that they do so in return. I wanted our voices to gain balance, have depth, find, finally, good words for what we knew or thought we knew.
