Orion

I love Orion, his fiery body, his ten stars,
his flaring points of reference, his shining dogs.

“It is winter,” he says.
“We must eat,” he says. Our gloomy

and passionate teacher.


                                              Miles below

in the cold woods, with the mouse and the owl, 

with the clearness of water sheeted and hidden,

with the reason for the wind forever a secret, 
he descends and sits with me, his voice 
like the snapping of bones.


                                                   Behind him

everything is so black and unclassical; behind him
I don’t know anything, not even

my own mind.


-- Mary Oliver (1935- ), American poet, from Dream Work, 1986