Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter…I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it…I want to think again of dangerous and noble things, I want to be light and frolicsome, I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings. – Starlings in Winter, Mary Oliver
For the better part of a year, colleagues talked nonstop about Hamilton. I went along with the conversation, not wanting to admit I hadn’t actually listened to the groundbreaking musical yet. Finally, on a cross-country plane trip for work, I listened start to finish. Yes, I was late to the bandwagon, but that was all it took for me to be fully on board.
That is a little bit like how it was with Mary Oliver’s poetry. For years, friends told me I would enjoy her work. But I did not begin reading her poems in earnest until after her death in 2019. And once I did, they stayed with me, especially Starlings in Winter.
With its bare, interlaced branches and quiet sky, winter seems to hold a promise every year. While beautiful on its own, it carries the grief of falling leaves with the promise of spring’s first green. Against a winter backdrop, Oliver’s starlings sweep across the landscape with enviable grace. They move with “silent confirmation that they are this notable thing,” full of gorgeous life.
In 2019, there was little getting past grief, and even now I am not sure if there is a getting past. But hopefully there is a getting through, and, in our own time, a chance to climb. I want my son and daughter, and me, too, to be light and frolicsome, to think again of dangerous and noble things. Grief has shaped us, but I pray it does not limit us.
In her poem, Poppies, Oliver wrote that “light is an invitation to happiness, and that happiness, when it’s done right, is a kind of holiness, palpable and redemptive.” Winter turns to spring, spring brings more light, and we hear a call to fly. Here’s to the improbable beauty in soaring and diving and rising again.
Grief, Reflected 