Looking up and finding oneself lost is a startling and sobering event. There are times when we (I, you, us) forge on as if by instinct, as if it is the only thing we can do. And that keeps us going for some time. But eventually we succeed or fail (for me, it’s usually a bit of both). And it’s during these in-between moments that I look around and see my surroundings as if for the first time and remember there is more than survival. There is also thriving and every life-giving and frustrating point in between.
But, this poem doesn’t talk about thriving. It is Mary’s searing reminder that even in these times of hunting my own minotaurs, that I am tethered by a thread that will help me find my way out. Beyond all chance and hope, there is a thread that I forgot I trailed behind me that will guide me.
Looking back, I find this hard to believe, even after I’ve escaped the depths of the labyrinths I find myself lost in from time to time. There were days, weeks, months, and years when I was stranded in the in the dark machinations of my mind. I forsook gentleness and intimacy and took up a tenuous, hardened edge that helped me batter through. I cried out, I flung about grasping for anything, anyone to tether me. Truly, the deed took all my heart. It robbed me and it shaped me. It was the only thing I could do; the only life I could save. This deed, this losing myself to slay the minotaur was a necessary act. There was no option to avoid it. It had to be done.
Yet throughout the deed(s), I was not alone. Mary writes
I was no common man
And had no need of love.
I trailed the shining thread
Behind me, for a vow,
Despite the choices I made to survive, somewhere through all of it I left a shining thread. It was not my idea - nor often my desire - to leave a thread. Sitting here from my vantage point, looking backwards, it stuns me to think that I somehow was never alone, that I was never truly abandoned or lost.
This poem (and many others) bring me deep solace knowing that Mary experienced her own tribulations and came through the other side. I rest my eyes and thank Mary for sharing her words with me, with us.
Thank you, Mary.
The Return
The deed took all my heart.
I did not think of you,
Not till the thing was done.
I put my sword away
And then no more the cold
And perfect fury ran
Along my narrow bones
And then no more the black
And dripping corridors
Hold anywhere the shape
That I had come to slay.
Then for the first time,
I saw in the cave’s belly
The dark and clotted webs,
The green and sucking pools,
The rank and crumbling walls,
The maze of passages.
And I thought then
Of the far earth,
Of the spring sun
And the slow wind,
And a young girl,
And I looked then
At the white thread.
Hunting the minotaur
I was no common man
And had no need of love.
I trailed the shining thread
Behind me, for a vow,
And did not think of you.
It lay there, like a sign,
Coiled on the bull’s great hoof.
And back into the world,
Half blind with weariness
I touched the thread and wept.
O, it was frail as air.
And I turned then
With the white spool
Through the cold rocks,
Through the black rocks,
Through the long webs,
And the mist fell,
And the webs clung,
And the rocks tumbled,
And the earth shook.
And the thread held.Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems Vol. 1, 1992, Beacon Press