Knowing Them By Heart

Last semester I had the pleasure of spending part of my week reading and analyzing British poetry with a gifted poet and brilliant man. I usually left his class with my book bag in one hand and removing my chin from the floor with the other because every day some poem would come up in the discussion and he would recite it from memory. He rarely had to refer to the textbook and could even pick up in the middle of a poem. It struck me that in the past four years I have spent countless hours memorizing Spanish verbs (which I loathe), but haven't made an effort to memorize a poem (my passion, my work) in years. Sure, I can recite a few poems from memory, "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost that I had to learn in 8th grade, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43, "How do I love you, let me count the ways..." a remnant of teenage love drama , and a few assorted others that just sort of lodged themselves in my head. Still, I would like to know some poems by HEART - not just because someone said I had to learn them, or because I read them so many times they stuck, but because words are just part of who I am . So, I have decided to spend a little time learning some poems. I started with a poem I love, "Morning Poem," by Mary Oliver.

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped ashes
of the night
turn into leaves again

and attach themselves to the high branches -
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
onto which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away long the soft trails

for yours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead -
if it is all you can do
to keep on trudging

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered,
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.


Okay, so I had to double check and and make sure the line breaks were right, but besides that - this is typed from memory!