Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith, Mary Oliver

The first time I read this poem it was just an excerpt in Ted Kooser’s The Poetry Home Repair Manual, just the first five lines, and so that’s how I’ll always think of it.  I was so surprised later when I discovered that it was far longer.  Out of respect for Mary Oliver and because it really is a glorious poem in its entirety, I’ve included the whole thing here, but—though I don’t actually care for Kooser’s poetry at all, and didn’t much care for the Repair Manual, either—I’m so glad that I first encountered it that way, since I still think it’s actually an even better, more heartbreaking poem if you stop reading and let it end after the fifth line …

Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun’s brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can’t hear

anything, I can’t see anything—
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling up,
nor the leaves
deepening the damp powers,

nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,

the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker—
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.

And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing—
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,

the tapping of downwardness of the banyan feet—
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.

And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees
And the mystery hidden in the dirt

swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?

One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn’s beautiful body
is sure to be there.