Mary Oliver Poem 6 – The Loon on Oak-Head Pond

Mary Oliver Poem 6 – The Loon on Oak-Head Pond

In Owls and Other Fantasies, page 33, Mary Oliver lets us see the loon, or at least, as much as the evening light and the misted land lets you see it.  Oliver starts the short poem in an interesting fashion, where the title of the poem “The Loon on Oak-Head Pond” flows right into the first sentence, “cries for three days, in the gray mist”.  The poem continues to start lines with action words like cries, plunges, and blinks, and each time the loon, in any form, is not spoken of.  It’s only the actions of the loon that show in her writing.  When one does not have a movie screen to show a scene, and only pen and paper, evoking a sense of mystery or a cloaked surrounding must be done through literary elements.  It’s quite clever how Oliver maintains a cohesive scene description without mentioning the loon directly at all, because it helps convey to the reader a sense of absence or mystery about the loon.  You can sense the loon, hear the loon, but can never get one good gaze at it.

The next part of the poem addresses the human observer in the story, putting the reader directly in their shoes.  It says, “you come every afternoon, and wait to hear [the loon]” under the thick pines of the forest “as though it were your own vanishing song”.  The key words of ‘you’ and ‘yours’ give to the reader a sense of being in that scene of nature.  The mark of a good writer is one that doesn’t need to say “imagine you’re there”, but actually put the reader there, and immerse them in a realistic setting of thick pines in the gray mist.

Oliver’s writing also brings to me a sense of tranquility.  There’s a thought of the loon being mysterious and vanishing into nature, but alongside that comes a sense of quiet observation and meditative understanding.  I believe that if I was in that scene I would take in a deep breath of natural air and also be patient, listen for the sound of the loon.