Oh, Mary.

Over the past several years, I've looked out windows and thought of Mary. The act of looking out a window is to look outside yourself. Outside where you are. Maybe I was washing dishes, my hands submerged in hot water, and looked up to see a pair of doves pecking at my marshy yard. Maybe I was sitting at my desk, prepping syllabi and course materials only to look up and spy a squirrel stealing sunflower seeds from my bird feeder. Maybe I was in a meeting at work and the sound of traffic outside was indicative of bad weather, so I looked up, and yes, snow had been falling.

Throughout my adult years, especially during times of depression and desperation, I asked myself What would Mary do? Or when gazing out windows, I'd wonder What is Mary doing right now? Susceptible to anxiety attacks and downright melancholia, I'd focus my gaze outward and imagine Mary silently finding her way through a forest. I'd imagine her mindful footsteps. I'd imagine the time she came across a large, heavy, injured turtle on the beach, picked it up, and walked it miles to her car so she can seek for it rehabilitation. The sweat that must have gathered on her brow. These imaginings--they slowed my heart so that it beat with those imaginary steps of hers that tread so lightly in the snow.

Why Mary? Who is Mary? you might ask. Some may think of her as too romantic toward the natural world. Yes, the woman ate a pine cone that passed through the bowels of a bear. Yes, she took a recording of Gustav Mahler's sombre, classical music into the forest with her to teach the mockingbird a new song. Yes, she was a recluse who loved her dogs and spent her time in solitary wonder, amongst the trees, the birds, the foxes, and the fish. She was a poet.

I don't know everything about Mary, but like reading about any mythological, magical creature, I knew enough to create my own image of her and who she was. I know Mary had bad days. I know she suffered tremendous losses. I know she had experienced displacement. But Mary has been a beacon for me. Poems are often vessels of "I" this and "I" that--a linear experience of a single contemplation. However, Mary's poems--even though her presence is in the poem--was not about that "I". So, of course she remained cloaked in mystery. Of course I turned her into my own--dare I say--goddess.

For years, I have been carrying a little blue notebook where I write down meaningful passages from things that I read. I carry it with me everywhere. I simply call it my "Little Blue Book". Mary's words are peppered throughout along with lines from other poets, scientists, and writers. My Little Blue Book has been my own version of a bible, I suppose. When feeling blue, anxious, or uninspired, I consult it and I'm brought back to the surface again, even if it's for a brief time.

Mary passed away today. In Florida. For the longest time and for most of her writing life, she lived and wrote about the wilderness world of New England and its coast. And for a brief while, she was a writer-in-residence at my alma mater in Virginia. To think that I walked the same lanes and trails and pastures as Mary Oliver--is something. Like there's some almost-invisible strand, thin as spider-silk, that connects us. To imagine her dying in the warm, shallow, watery world of Florida was and still is foreign to me. Like a viking being buried in a desert.

I loved her. I was at work today when social media told me she had passed away. I immediately wept. I wept. She died at 83--a ripe age, but nonetheless, oh my goodness, no, it's not--it would never be--the right time for such a gentle, kindred spirit to leave this realm. I worked and kept myself together most of the day (it was a hilariously shitty day consisting of a lost debit card that I cancelled and then found and couldn't un-cancel). I had every intention to go to the gym to run a few miles, but when work ended, snow began to coat the streets which seemed appropriate. So instead, I went home and sat outside on my patio and watched passersby make footprints in the snow. I met with my good friend Jeannette for dinner, who also wept at Mary's passing. And this is why I love and cherish Jeannette.

Today, I took a spoon of peanut butter down into my basement to feed Mus, my captured house mouse that I am fostering inside a large tank until it's warm enough to release him outside. Uncovering the tank in the darkness of my basement, I gasped to find him dead in his warm, shallow, water dish.