My grandmother turns 102 in December. She was born during the Spanish flu, lived her teen years through the Great Depression, married a husband who left the day after they married for World War II, and is now on lockdown in an assisted living facility that has seen zero cases of COVID because they acted early and fast. She is lonely but resigned and waiting patiently for the pall to lift.
This poem today is for her. I think she might think it was pretty but not go much farther than that. My wish for her, as a person whose time on earth is closer its end than its beginning, is that she might be able at some point in the remainder of her life, see or hear something that kills her with delight.
Obvi, not literally. Good lord.
Mindful by Mary Oliver
Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?