Long ago, some professor told us about “content analysis”.  There were no doubt many layers of meaning but all I remember is the frequency of certain words in a written passage.

Or simply their presence.

I’m healthy … and old.  Death seeps into my thoughts.  Often I’m drawn to poetry rather than prose.  And so to Mary Oliver.  She has spoken to me for a very long time.  Mary opens me.

Here is a lovely poem called “Lead”.  If there’s a future time when I’ll no longer be able to compose or absorb sentences, perhaps I’ll be able to linger with certain words.  Mary’s creation has a few that I savour:

Here is a story
to break your heart
Are you willing?

This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one
of nothing we could see

A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it
you know is a sacred thing

The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake
was dead on the shore

And for which, if you have not heard it
you had better hurry to where
they still sing and, believe me, tell no one
just where that is

I tell you this
to break your heart
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world

***

Maybe when I’m 95

This will be enough