Poet Mary Oliver’s stark and beautiful perspective on life and love invites me to think of things more deeply. Her poem, “Starlings in Winter,” uses the image of black starlings, “acrobats in the freezing wind,” to pose the question, how are they so “full of gorgeous life”? “[E]ven in the “leafless winter . . . in the ashy city.” Oliver says, “I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it; . . .”

We might be thinking of such things as we emerge from COVID. We might feel, as Oliver does, our boots trying to leave the ground and our hearts pumping hard. Grief can cause these feelings. But by thinking of grief (and COVID’s been full of it) and by processing and sharing it, we might move forward into a new place, phase, season. 

May your yearnings meet Oliver’s as she describes the future she desires: “I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” May we all think on such things.

Margo Walter