A poem I like

 In 2025, I'd like to read more poetry. I want to be the kind of person that would have a favorite poet, and reads a ratty, broken-backed poetry book during lunch. I think people that read poetry books are inscrutable and I'd like people to see me reading poetry and feel a slight tinge of intimidation, maybe fear.

I found this poem because a section of it was printed on the back of a Dalton Doodles print.

I think everything I buy should come with a little poem tbh

The Kingfisher by Mary Oliver 

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave
like a blue flower, in his beak
he carries a silver leaf. I think this is
the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
that doesn’t have its splash of happiness?
There are more fish than there are leaves
on a thousand trees, and anyway the kingfisher
wasn’t born to think about it, or anything else.
When the wave snaps shut over his blue head, the water
remains water—hunger is the only story
he has ever heard in his life that he could believe.
I don’t say he’s right. Neither
do I say he’s wrong. Religiously he swallows the silver leaf
with its broken red river, and with a rough and easy cry
I couldn’t rouse out of my thoughtful body
if my life depended on it, he swings back
over the bright sea to do the same thing, to do it
(as I long to do something, anything) perfectly.

To me, this poem is saying that we live on this beautiful planet, a world that isn't devoid of happiness even on its worst days, a world of "more fish than there are leaves on a thousand trees"--abundant and diverse--where even a bird diving into water to eat a fish is a perfection we can see and witness everyday if we chose to.

I like the juxtaposition of the narrator being envious of the kingfisher for a skill that is somewhat mindless to the kingfisher, while the narrator longs to "do something, anything" as perfectly as the kingfisher does this one thing. The kingfisher "wasn't born to think about it", while the narrator says they "couldn't rouse [the cry] out of my thoughtful body". Maybe it's a case of making what you want to do the things you do everyday. If you do them everyday, then they become mindless, and in a way, there is a perfection to be found more easily in that.

But honestly, I think it's more about how there's a perfection in nature, possibly even a perfection that we will never have. We can't be like the kingfisher, we can't say we weren't born to think about it. A lot of what we do is think about everything. Overthink, too. We can't dive like the kingfisher or cry like the kingfisher. It seems to me like the poem is saying we should enjoy this beauty and find this perfection where we can.