by Mary Oliver
I wonder
what it is
that I will accomplish
today
if anything
can be called
that marvelous word.
It won't be
my kind of work,
which is only putting
words on a page,
the pencil
haltingly calling up
the light of the world,
yet nothing appearing on paper
half as bright
as the mockingbird's
verbal hilarity
in the still unleafed shrub
in the churchyard--
or the white heron
rising
over the swamp
and the darkness,
his yellow eyes
and broad wings wearing
the light of the world
in the light of the world--
ah yes, I see him.
He is exactly
the poem
I wanted to write.
from Devotions: the Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
Penguin, 2017 
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