Mary Oliver Poem for anyone who’s Learning to Trust their Wings.

 Where the path closed

down and over,

through the scumbled leaves,

fallen branches,

through the knotted catbrier,

I kept going. Finally

I could not

save my arms

from thorns; soon

the mosquitoes

smelled me, hot

and wounded, and came

wheeling and whining.

And that’s how I came

to the edge of the pond:

black and empty

except for a spindle

of bleached reeds

at the far shore

which, as I looked,

wrinkled suddenly

into three egrets – – –

a shower

of white fire!

Even half-asleep they had

such faith in the world

that had made them – – –

tilting through the water,

unruffled, sure,

by the laws

of their faith not logic,

they opened their wings

softly and stepped

over every dark thing.

~A Mary Oliver Poem for anyone who’s Learning to Trust their Wings.

Self-liberation is not a singular experience.

I am learning this as a fledgling learns to test her wings. That day she hops from the familiar comfort of her nest onto a tree limb, stretches her wings, and drops into the naked space of air is monumental.

But this is only the beginning of flight. 

She must do this again and again, falling to the earth. She risks injury, capture, and death. This is the only way she can begin to know, to trust, what she is capable of. This is the only way she can know her wings as an extension of herself, one that releases her into the wholeness of who she is. 

She was born a bird—but she must birth herself into flight. 

The fledgling learning to fly doesn’t concern herself with what the other birds around her think of her process of becoming. She is not apologetic or self conscious; she is single-minded in her purpose. She will do this one thing she was born to do or she will die trying. 

Months ago, I jumped from my own nest and I have vacillated between flight and free fall, leaping and resting. Flight has not come easily, as it rarely—if ever—does. 

But I keep trying.

~

Yesterday, I was driving past an apple orchard encircling a pond. The sky was darkening, the wind gusting, thunder rumbling, and between the trees I saw a flash of white—an egret. 

I pulled the car over and stepped outside to get a closer look. I can count on one hand the number of egrets I have seen in my life. Today seemed like a visitation.

She was stalking the water’s edge, as heron tend to do, with measured precision. One long bamboo leg lifting, sweeping through the water, and then another. Her body moved in harmony with her one purpose. Focus, step, pause, repeat. Keep going. 

I watched until the raindrops fell from the sky, until she opened her expansive wings and took flight, trailing those long legs.

And then I came home and found this Mary Oliver poem, which I read aloud to myself, several times, until it sunk in: