Dear Mary Oliver by Gloria Heffernan

Featured in Vol.4 Issue 1 | The Spring 2015 Edition

Dear Mary Oliver, by Gloria Heffernan

Thank you for inviting me to eavesdrop on your conversations with the grasshopper; for allowing me to follow at a safe distance during your solitary walks through the fields just beyond your back door.

Thank you for transforming the shoulder of the road into an altar when I see the body of a dead deer or black snake lying there; and for urging me to pause and bow my head like a mourner filing past the coffin of a fallen president.

Thank you for teaching me that the gradual degradation of aging eyesight is simply a command to look more closely, study more deeply, see with my heart.

Thank you for instructing me in the arts of reverence and presence and gratitude. You who say you don’t know “exactly what a prayer is,” are the author of my morning vespers, and the psalmist whose voice I hear in the honking of the wild geese.