Saving The Only Life I Could Save

 I love that there is a national focus on poetry each year in April. I love teaching students to read, apppreciate, and write poetry, I love immersing myself in the beauty of  poetry, and I love to remember the poetry my mother read me before I went to sleep at night. In celebrating poetry this month, this is one of my favorites. Why? In the last few years I have saved the only life I could save.

The Journey

by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.

-Mary Oliver, from Dream Work

As I celebrate National Poetry Month for the next four weeks, what are some of your favorite poems?