In her poem “Evidence,” Mary Oliver ends the first part of the poem with this admonition:
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.
Keeping my heart open to the unimaginable is another way of saying–don’t let your imagination die. These days, our imagination may be in greater danger than it ever has been. We have, unfortunately, had to reserve the unimaginable for outrageous political antics, horrible acts of terror, and for genocide. Each event of this sort is utterly exhausting if we give them our attention. It uses up all that we might have had for the creative, the imaginal, the kind of space Oliver wants us to leave open.
Then, she engages our imagination by observing this:
There are many ways to perish, or to flourish.
How old pain, for example, can stall us at the threshold
of function . . .
Still friends, consider stone, that is without the fret of
gravity, and water that is without anxiety.
And the pine trees that never forget their recipe for
renewal. . .
And consider, always, every day, the determination of the
grass to grow despite the unending obstacles.
We may have to engage in a serious, daily practice of inviting ourselves and one another to find our imaginations and use them for good. We can imagine ourselves to be like the grass, determined to grow despite all of the unending obstacles. The messages will come, daily, like an old pain, that stop us and make us think that today is the day that we perish. That’s when we imagine ourselves to be like the grass and find ways, in the unimagined spaces, to flourish.
~Bob Patrick
