Mary Oliver “One or Two Things” and the importance of now.

1

Don’t bother me.

I’ve just

been born.

2

The butterfly’s loping flight

carries it through the country of the leaves

delicately, and well enough to get it

where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping

here and there to fuzzle the damp throats

of flowers and the black mud; up

and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly

lazy, riding motionless in the breeze on the soft stalk

of some ordinary flower.

3

The god of dirt

came up to me many times and said

so many wise and delectable things, I lay

on the grass listening

to his dog voice,

crow voice,

frog voice; now,

he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4

which has nevertheless always been,

like a sharp iron hoof,

at the center of my mind.

5

One or two things are all you need

to travel over the blue pond, over the deep

roughage of the trees and through the stiff

flowers of lightning—some deep

memory of pleasure, some cutting

knowledge of pain.

6

But to lift the hoof!

For that you need

an idea.

7

For years and years I struggled

just to love my life. And then

the butterfly

rose, weightless, in the wind.

“Don’t love your life

too much,” it said,

and vanished

into the world.

     Mary Oliver is a force to be reckoned with. Her more popular poems often deal with the limits of time. Perhaps you’ve read “The Summer Day,” with the question of “ Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me what it is you plan to do with this one wild and precious life.” She deals with time so well, and always is the question of what to do with it. There’s only so much of it, we must use our limited time wisely. And here there is a tension in the lessons of this poem. As tempting as it is to look to the future, and think of forever and the great expanse of time we have before us, the wise ‘god of the dirt’ tells us, in his myriad of voices, that there is only now. 

     This is a concept I teach my students often. There is not past or future, only the present. Because even as we speak, as I type, as you breath, you never find yourself in the future. You find yourself in a new now. So the many different voices are all correct. There is only now. The future will come but it will not be the future it will be “now.” This is terrifying for some and enlightening for others. I like to try and keep my mind on the positive aspects of it. The future is not written yet and I can change it right now with small actions. Not only is there no future, there’s no past. Those mistakes that keep you up at night, the things that harmed you in the past, they’re gone and done. You can do something now to take back your life. You can do something right now to take a step towards something better. 

     Honestly, even now, we can learn something from stopping and listening. The central image of this poem is the butterfly, which has, oddly enough, very little control over its flight path. If you’ve ever watched a butterfly it sort of, loops and flaps its way around, but it’s not the clear easy path of other flying animals. In section 2, she highlights this inability to control itself, but instead of being worried, the butterfly sometimes lazily floats around, giving into the random chaos that is the breeze. And those moments are “delicious.” It’s hard to imagine losing one’s self in a moment where you have no control, it can be a terrifying thought for many of us. But, as writer Michelle McNamara said, “It’s Chaos, be kind.” Patton Oswalt, McNamara’s surviving husband, expanded on that in his comedy special, “Annihilation.” He explains that there doesn’t seem to be a grand order to the world, so all we can do is show kindness to others. We’re all in the chaos together, no one is above it, so we have to be kind. To show love and kindness to make it through the random world we inhabit. The butterfly lets go and allows the chaos to happen, simply accepting it. In that moment it finds peace in the chaos. we can do the same by using empathy and accepting the chaos, and then knowing others are just flitting about just like butterflies, too. 

     The butterfly comes back in the final section with more to show us; “don’t love your life too much.” This seems mean, especially for the butterfly. However, it’s important to look at the advice instead of the curt delivery. Love is an attachment, and in letting go we must let go of attachments. Let go of the things that keep us from accepting the now. Can we truly experience “now” if we’re holding onto something so tightly we refuse the let it go? At the end of our life, hopefully a long one, there is a moment to let go. To fight nature, to refuse the final part of life, death, is to hold on to something too dearly. There is a time that we must know that one day our life will end. This is not to say life is not precious, on the contrary it is all we have. The butterfly just goes with the flow, it does not fight, it does not struggle, it just flaps its wings and gets where it’s going anyway. It’s very Tao, the butterfly. And Taoism is one of the best methods of understanding the now. one of the central components of Taoism is wu wei, or “not doing.” It is to do by doing nothing, the idea of simply going with the flow like water takes the path of least resistance yet gets everything done. The butterfly agrees. 

     The line break from section 3 to 4 is just divine. The speaker knows the advice, knows the importance of letting go of forever, and that line could end there very nicely, but it doesn’t. It has a slight pause in the comma, but not the full stop of a period, and continues on to the next section, creating tension by taking what seems like a nice little bow of enlightenment and smashing it to the ground, adding that forever “... has nevertheless always been,/ like a sharp iron hoof,/ at the center of my mind.” Look at how close “forever” and “always” are in these lines. Both words are almost similes, forever meaning to last endlessly, and always meaning to have lasted for all time. That’s the future and the past right there. What’s in the middle?

Now. 

     Anyway, “Forever” is a sharp iron hoof, think of that image, the pointy, powerful force of that sticking in your mind. Hard to get around, isn’t it? Hard to focus on “now” when “forever” keeps poking your brain. Especially if it’s “always” been there. So the speaker knows the advice, and she seems to want to take that advice, but it’s hard because of that hoof. So what does the speaker do? She tells us about the one or two things from title, representing a way of making it through. 

     The one or two things are memories of pleasure or knowledge of pain. And that’s what you need to get through the blue pond. The blue pond is life, the world, existence, all of it. All you need is a memory of something good, and the knowledge that there is pain in the world. From pain you learn and grow, from pleasure you have a reason to continue to learn and grow. But, the speaker reminds us in the next section, you wanT to lift that hoof! The hoof of forever! What will that take? For that you need an idea, which isn’t  a memory or knowledge, it is something new. 

     She turns to the butterfly. And it says ‘let go’ and then disappears. 

     Mary Oliver, you are an absolute beast. This poem is expertly crafted and well balanced. Nothing is without its payoff and I am in love with it. I think I want to use this advice as I try to learn to code. There’s so much to worry about: is this useful? What’s the point of it if I’m just gonna be a teacher? What’s the payoff of this? But what if instead I lived in the now and just kept going? All I need is one or two things, but more importantly, I need to listen to right now, and let go of the worry and doubt and just find the pleasure of this moment before it’s gone forever,  like the butterfly.