The Journey

One day you finally knew 

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice-

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations, 

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the starts began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly 

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do 

the only thing you could do-

determined to save 

the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver

I posted this poem for my very first post, back when I think my dear Katie was the only one reading (and now she's been joined by a handful of others, for which I am grateful).  I posted it because one of my professors read it for the opening devotional in our first class of the semester.  The same professor read it again for our last class, as our benediction, and its meaning changed for me, even in those three months.  I also quoted it in one of the papers I wrote today.  Now that I am one partially completed paper away from a seminary degree-this poem continues change and grow in its significance in my life.  

Do you have favorite poems that mean different things to you as you revisit them at different points in your life?  Isn't that what great poetry is supposed to do?  

Tomorrow morning I am off to North Carolina to visit a friend from college.  By Monday evening I will be back in Atlanta and finished with all the requirements for my MDiv.  Then I'll have one last week in the city for packing and visits before my family comes for graduation and I follow them back to Texas.  Wow-that sounds weird.  

Well, off to finish my last paper.  Crazy!