Mary Oliver Poem #4: Night Flight
In my opinion, one of the best ways to observe nature is from 35,000 feet above sea level. The ability to fly on an airplane provides people with the chance to experience nature from a different perspective. This is why I always enjoy sitting in the window seat, in order to gaze out upon the Earth around me. For this reason, when I was looking through Mary Oliver’s poems, I was intrigued when I saw the poem “Night Flight”. I was shocked to find this poem doesn’t revolve around Mary Oliver’s direct interaction with nature, but rather with her simply riding on an aircraft. The first stanza reads: “Traveling at thirty thousand feet, we see How much of earth still lies in wilderness, Till terminals occur like miracles To civilize the paralyzing dark.” After reading this first stanza, I remembered how easy it is to forget about the vast amount of land untouched by human civilization. I recalled the teachings of Edward Abbey and David Thoreau on the importance of prese...










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