Desire to Help a Friend Mary Oliver begins a poem, “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died. Make of yourself a light. Did he mean a lamp with a shade or modern with glass, incandescent bulbs or fluorescent, energy-saving, pink, red, yellow, white, or did he mean the light of breaking day and why do we say breaking. There is no clatter or crash, or perhaps there is, inside, and there is you, Dear Friend who I vow to help and if I said to make of yourself a light what would that do to the pain you feel right now. Should I become the light or advise you to become the light or both? Two lights. Where, then, is a place for darkness, for rest. I’ll be the light for now, shining like the sun. Your work is to be the cloud, wafting gently, like the paint on a fan. Beneath the cloud, the earth grows and falls apart. Flowers reach their petals and spread, jewelry cases for dew. Use your vapor like clay, form hands, that hug, and let go. Open as lace, grab a tree and attach, escape the fate of the stream. Be moss, soft green. Let fear dry like water pulled from clothes, into air. The masses don’t need you right now. Your ache is bare and your lair is cleansed with dream’s nubile rings. Clasp trees, sky, earth and clouds. Root there, in the buttons, that open and close, the skin so thin we wear. Take care of you, and in that, the world we share.
