In The New York Times, Mary Duenwald visits the woods near Provincetown, on the afar tip of Cape Cod. This is a land the poet Mary Oliver has made her own, with her soft, limpid, inviting poems. Duenwald almost literally follows in the footsteps of Oliver, just as Oliver herself once followed in the footsteps of a pair of deer.
I’d seen
their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night
under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I
got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under
the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes …
This is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be…
[from Five A.M in the Pinewoods]
It's a lovely conceit for a newspaper travel piece, with a picture of Blackwater Pond to match.
Kit Stolz 