Alderperson Vered Meltzer’s Invocation At 03/01/2023 Common Council Meeting – “I would like to share a poem with you tonight by Mary Oliver.”

Mayor Jake Woodford: Good evening I now call to order the Wednesday March 1, 2023 meeting of the Appleton Common Council. Tonight’s invocation will be delivered by Alder Meltzer.

Alderperson Vered Meltzer (District 2): Thank you. I would like to share a poem with you tonight by Mary Oliver. Mary Jane Oliver was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her work is inspired by nature rather than the human world, stemming from her lifelong passion for solitary walks in the wild. This poem is titled “Spring.”

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Thank you.