Lake Bonny/ Mary Oliver

I went to Lake Bonny Park for this field trip, and I stayed there for at least 45 minutes.

One thing I don’t usually voice to people is how much I enjoy nature. Since I was little I have been surrounded with it and I have always wanted nothing more than to work with animals and plants. To not only be surrounded by God’s creations but to also be able to work with them on a daily basis will be a dream come true. I actually just changed my and just being surrounded by God’s beauty.  I just changed my major, actually, to biology, which is incredibly exciting.  I think that being a zookeeper or park ranger or even an environmental educator would be absolutely fantastic.

However on the note of poetry, it is definitely not my strong suit. Now I realize that when I say that I could get in the argument of how the Bible is full of poetry. We could even get into how music could be considered poetry. But when we just look at poetry, like Emily Dickinson, I just don’t understand or like it. Many people can just sit back and read a poem over and over and get all of this meaning out of it and I can’t. To be honest I don’t even remember what makes a poem a poem. I do remember it has something to do with rhythm and lines. I also know that many people associate poetry with things that rhythm.

Although, in saying all of this I didn’t enjoy Mary Oliver. Perhaps not specifically for her poetry, because to be honest I didn’t understand some of it, but for what it was about. For example in her poem Messenger, I could picture everything that she was talking about and I enjoyed that.

The second line specifically sunflowers and hummingbirds. These are two of my mother and my favorite things. (Which is kind of ironic)  We grow sunflowers every year and with hummingbirds every time we could see one my mom would get so excited. Talk about how beautiful they were. They are definitely two things that I hold dear to my heart, so this poem stuck out to me because of that.

“One cannot truly love and be present to God without being led back to loving the world. And one cannot truly love and be present to the world without being mortally disappointed” This really stuck out to me, all I could think of was how we shouldn’t be apart of the world and there are even times when I have had people tell me that there is nothing good in the world. But then you have to begin to think about what God intended this world to be. How he wanted us to enjoy the things that surround us, however there

are obvious things we should not enjoy. ( I don’t really think I need to go into all of that. )

The Uses of Sorrow is definitely an example of poetry I don’t like. Granted, it is a deep poem, which is probably, what people love about it, but I just don’t understand what is the darkness and why is it a gift?

When I think about the trees

I wonder how long they have been here and

If anyone appericiates their beauty.

I wonder how they got to be here.

Did they happen to be a small seed

that traveled in the fur of a bear 

from a different state?

Or maybe they floated through 

the wind.

Has anyone deemed this tree 

their tree?

Kissed the one the love dearly under it?

Maybe they carved their names

into the bark when they first met.

When I think about the trees

I wonder how much oxygen it has produced 

so we may live.

I wonder how much shade and comfort 

they have provided for us. 

I wonder, has anyone apperciated their beauty.