Poem: “Lead,” by Mary Oliver

 Here is a story 

to break your heart. 

Are you willing? 

This winter 

the loons came to our harbor 

and died, one by one, 

of nothing we could see. 

A friend told me 

of one on the shore 

that lifted its head and opened 

the elegant beak and cried out 

in the long, sweet savoring of its life 

which, if you have heard it, 

you know is a sacred thing, 

and for which, if you have not heard it, 

you had better hurry to where 

they still sing. 

And, believe me, tell no one 

just where that is. 

The next morning, 

this loon, speckled 

and iridescent and with a plan 

to fly home 

to some hidden lake, 

was dead on the shore. 

I tell you this 

to break your heart, 

by which I mean only 

that it break open and never close again 

to the rest of the world.