Gannets
by
Mary Oliver
I
am watching the white gannets
blaze down
into the water
with the
power of blunt spears
and a stunning
accuracy–
even though
the sea is riled and boiling
and gray
with fog
and the
fish
are nowhere
to be seen,
they fall,
they explode into the water
like white
gloves,
then they
vanish,
then they
climb out again,
from the
cliff of the wave,
like white
flowers–
and still
I think
that nothing
in this world moves
but as a
positive power–
even the
fish, finning down into the current
or collapsing
in the red
purse of the beak,
are only
interrupted from their own pursuit
of whatever
it is
that fills
their bellies–
and I say:
life is
real,
and pain
is real,
but death
is an imposter,
and if I
could be what once I was,
like the
wolf or the bear
standing
on the cold shore,
I would
still see it–
how the
fish simply escape, this time,
or how they
slide down into a black fire
for a moment,
then rise
from the water inseparable
from
the gannets’ wings.
From NEW AND SELECTED
POEMS by Mary Oliver. Copyright © 1992 by Mary Oliver. Reprinted
by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.
Mary Oliver was
awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984 for AMERICAN PRIMITIVE.
Her poems, "Humpbacks" and "Gannets" are included
in her book NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, for which she received the 1992
National Book Award for Poetry.
