Poetry Moment: 5 AM in the Pinewoods

5 AM in the Pinewoods

by: Mary Oliver

I’d seen

their hoofprints in the deep

needles and knew

they ended the long night

under the pines, walking

like two mute

and beautiful women toward

the deeper woods, so I

got up in the dark and

went there. They came

slowly down the hill

and looked at me sitting under

the blue trees, shyly

they stepped

closer and stared

from under their thick lashes and even

nibbled some damp

tassels of weeds. This

is not a poem about a dream,

though it could be.

This is a poem about the world

that is ours, or could be.

Finally

one of them—I swear it!—

would have come to my arms.

But the other

stamped sharp hoof in the

pine needles like

the tap of sanity,

and they went off together through

the trees. When I woke

I was alone,

I was thinking:

so this is how you swim inward,

so this is how you flow outward,

so this is how you pray.