M.I. Devine

Stuck Inside a Mary Oliver Poem with the Milton Blues Again

“Then a wren in the privet began to sing…

I don’t know why. And yet, why not.”

 

–Mary Oliver, “I Happened to be Standing”

 

I happen to be standing inside a Mary Oliver poem.

You know, the one where there’s a privet

 

And a wren and the wren begins to sing. So

There I am, just me in the privet. A privet!

 

Imagine that! And Mary did! And didn’t:

Because there she is, looking at the privet, so

 

Close I can whisper, “Mary, Mary, what’s a privet?”

But I don’t because you know what it is when you’re in it.

 

It’s hard to explain, a privet: It’s all how you look at it,

Mary would say, but that’s not how she’d put it. She’d put a wren

 

In it—and there’s the wren! A privet, for me, is how

I spy on Mary. (But that’s me.) She can’t see me but I can

 

See her through my privet. Or her privet. It’s private

Property, I get it, but then again it is a poem. Legally speaking,

 

I’m in a gray area, though Mary would call it medium taupe.

Naturally, the sky is gunmetal. It’s a devilish engine,

 

A poem, where you can annihilate everything made

Into a private thought, a privet’s shade.

 

Mary, my bride, still married to amazement,

The moon looks crushed like an antidepressant.

 

Is it true that we must in the end surrender?

And choose no longer to decide to choose? I wonder. And I wonder

 

If I am the spy of the great Forbidder.

I don’t know why. And yet, why not.


M.I. Devine is the author of Warhol’s Mother’s Pantry, winner of the Gournay prize. Co-founder of the pop art collective Famous Letter Writer, he's received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and, most recently, the New York State Council on the Arts for DADAMAMA, a follow-up record to Warhola. His work has appeared widely, in Literary Matters, Los Angeles Review of Books, Dappled Things, American Literature, American Songwriter, through NPR Music, and elsewhere. He is Professor of English and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at SUNY Plattsburgh. (https://famousletterwriter.substack.com )