Messenger
Messenger - meaning Summary
Attention as Grateful Work
The speaker defines her purpose as loving the living world. Rather than dwelling on age, flaws, or worn possessions, she turns her attention to ordinary natural life: plants, birds, animals, and the soil. The poem presents attentive stillness, astonishment, and rejoicing as forms of work. Its final claim of living forever expresses a hopeful sense of continuity through gratitude and participation in the world.
Read Complete AnalysesMy work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird - equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work, which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here, Which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.
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