“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice –”

Mary Oliver’s poem “The Journey” continues, “though the whole house / began to tremble / and you felt the old tug / at your ankles . . .” The journey she describes didn’t stop, even though it was “a wild night.” The stars began “to burn / through the sheets of clouds” until there was “a new voice / which you slowly recognized as your own.”  I, too, am beginning a journey. I’m entering a place where I hope to hear a new voice. Poetry – especially the ones with wild parts – will keep me company. What will I discover? I have no idea what awaits.

Oliver, Mary. “The Journey.”  Ten Poems to Change Your Life, edited by Roger Housden, Harmony Books, 2001, pp. 9-10.

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