Mary Oliver

Black Oaks

freedom free verse reflective

Black Oaks - meaning Summary

Nature Against Ambition

The poem contrasts social ambition and productivity with the speaker's longing to remain in the natural world. Black oaks seem self-sufficient and beyond human achievement, drawing her away from work, money, and ordinary obligations. Her refusal to leave the rain and woods is not simple passivity: it expresses a desire for a life shaped by attention, bodily presence, and freedom from restless pressure to accomplish.

Read Complete Analyses

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary, or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance and comfort. Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays carp and whistle all day in the branches, without the push of the wind. But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage of their shoulders, and their shining green hair. Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a little sunshine, a little rain. Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another -- why don't you get going? For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees. And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

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