Albert K. Ashes-Bury Hopes No One Need Understand This

After Mary Oliver

I add After to many of my own now, but before?
I admit, I found it difficult, as I couldn’t really relate to poetry.
I found most of it quite irritating, and it made me angry,
not being able to feel or understand the poems.
Instead, I would have a thought, like, I don’t experience life like that at all!
but layers would mask over thought, layers that remained confused,
protective, this leaving me unable to grasp a lot of things. I couldn’t access
trees or air or deer, for instance, and certainly
none of that love thing, or even the most basic of feeling,
all of which appear in many poems. I think I only had access to fear,
not that I can remember, nor do I wish to; and I still do, at times,
only feel that same fear becoming terror very deeply.

But my terror is getting quieter (it always gets quieter),
and I hope no one need understand this again.
Though, I wouldn’t want a choir to be the only ones hearing me either:
does someone finally being able to write about terror
help others sing? How do the confused gain a voice—an experience—
after so long?

I would like to tell you about the foxes that come to my garden now.
I think most of my friends just find it funny (though I try not to think so much, Mary).
She’d know why they were here—they turn up to guide me: I’m now open to thinking this.
And what’s more, a badger came the other night!
Below my window it was, rustling. Like it was doing a dance in the reeds!
I could do with cutting the reeds back, but for their sake, I won’t.
Although I doubt foxes and badgers ever dance off together?
Imagine it though! Can you picture it?
I’ve seen them both now, at least—I’ve experienced them.
And I do hope you can picture it.

Mary, did you know, I was the saddest boy in the world once,
and I didn’t even know it?
I didn’t feel the walls at all, even as a child—even as I ran
my fingers along the grit, not knowing, that right at those moments,
the walls were making themselves so difficult to push down—so painful.

And I’m sorry I found you annoying, even though
I’m sure you understand. And since I am apologising
and realising things, I wanted to ask: could you help me
with those that can’t sing? As I see many that don’t realise it yet:
they cannot sing or feel or think.
Of course, they are all OK (O Mary—
they are so beautiful and wonderful),
but there are many of them, and I’d like to help a little.

By the way, sometimes I talk to the animals now, you know.
Yes—I’m at that strange point: waving at foxes and badgers!
I might learn some plant names too, though
this is a big “might”, it not really being my thing.
But at least I can feel them now.

And you know, I cry when I want to now, as I am
able to cry, there being no question about where I’ll do it either:
in the dark; in the woods; down the street.
This feels very, very beautiful and wonderful at times, too, you know,
like it also does
to finally be able to feel, experience and understand poems—and you,
let alone myself.

I could sound very silly now (though it does feel good to say it,
and I don’t really care how I sound), but I’m sure the foxes
understand me
when they see me crying, and that they even appear
to nod at me, at times—in the woods, street,
dark—which, of course,
you understood and felt, too.

O Mary—and again, I am sorry.
But thank you.

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