Alligator poem

I knelt down  

at the edge of the water, 

and if the white birds standing  

in the tops of the trees whistled any warning 

I didn’t understand, 

I drank up to the very moment it came 

crashing toward me, 

its tail flailing 

like a bundle of swords, 

slashing the grass, 

and the inside of its cradle-shaped mouth 

gaping, 

and rimmed with teeth— 

and that’s how I almost died 

of foolishness 

in beautiful Florida. 

But I didn’t.  

I leaped aside, and fell, 

and it streamed past me, crushing everything in its path 

as it swept down to the water 

and threw itself in, 

and, in the end, 

this isn’t a poem about foolishness 

but about how I rose from the ground 

and saw the world as if for the second time, 

the way it really is. 

The water, that circle of shattered glass, 

healed itself with a slow whisper 

and lay back 

with the back-lit light of polished steel, 

and the birds, in the endless waterfalls of the trees, 

shook open the snowy pleats of their wings, and drifted away, 

while, for a keepsake, and to steady myself, 

I reached out, 

I picked the wild flowers from the grass around me—

blue stars 

and blood-red trumpets 

on long green stems— 

for hours in my trembling hands they glittered  

like fire. 

by Mary Oliver

Baby alligators intertwined at Melbourne Zoo © Jennifer Phillips