Morning at Blackwater
by Mary Oliver It's almost dawn and the usual half-miracles begin within my own personal body as the light enters the gates of the east and climbs into the fields of the sky, and the birds lift their very unimportant heads from the branches and begin to sing; and the insects too, and the rustling leaves, and even that most common of earthly things, the grass, can't let it begin - another morning - without making some comment of gladness, respiring softly with the honey of their green bodies; and the white blossoms of the swamp honeysuckle, hovering just where the path and the pond almost meet, shake from the folds of their bodies such happiness it enters the air of fragrance, the day's first pale and elegant affirmation. And the old gods liked so well, they say, the sweet odor of prayer. Since starting my day with a poem, sometimes two or three by Mary Oliver, I have felt, growing in the space where my heart should be, but where for the past couple of years a hard egg of anxiety resides, this warm glow of gratitude. I’ve recently ventured onto google earth to view Blackwater pond from above, and from afar, and realised that, the pond is a particularly small body of water, compared to other much larger ponds in the same beech forest. And yet, this body of water has served as the origin (read: inspiration) for this magnificent body of work Mary Oliver, produced over 5 decades. This unassuming yet absolutely exquisite body of water led to works of such profound beauty and capacity that it has forever changed the way we (many of us) see and experience the world. Oliver said: “My work is loving the world” and she did wildly, fiercely and abundantly so, and she has inspired me to do the same. I realised that his spot, here on this picture, though likely far smaller than Blackwater, but no less significant, no less beautiful, is becoming my body of water – although it is sometimes just a piece of fenland during the dry season, it does provoke in me the same love of the world, Mary Oliver speaks about. In know every one of these milkwoods, intimately, I have, to date, drawn parts of them 7 times over and will likely do so many times more over the next decade... This is my body of water, the source of my life’s work. My way of showing how much I love the world. My humble contribution to showing the world how much I love it. This is just the beginning... The milkwood forest is nestled in this liminal space between ocean and neighbourhood, like Oliver’s beech forest it is close to the ocean, and close to man made structures but simultaneously wholly elsewhere, it is a window into Gaia, into what reciprocity with the world could and should be. To walk here is an act of loving the world which will go on perpetually across time and space and for which I am profoundly grateful.
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AuthorLaurette de Jager is a Visual Artist working with the Ephemeral Nature of Things, in the hope of finding new ways of existing in a dying Archives
October 2023
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©2022 by Laurette de Jager
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