The Wild Geese and the Shopping Cart

Last week, I pulled up the Mary Oliver web­site to find a poem to read after yoga class. For the first time, I noticed a SHOP icon in the menu bar. The “Mary Oliver Official Storefront” car­ries totes, hats, stick­ers, and sweat­shirts embla­zoned with phras­es from her most rec­og­nized poems. 

I am exact­ly the tar­get audi­ence for these items. In a fren­zy of dis­so­ci­at­ed shop­ping, I quick­ly added to my cart a hat read­ing “Hello, sun in my face” ($34.99) and a hood­ie read­ing “Joy is not made to be a crumb” ($59.99). Words that have always felt like pri­vate prayers were now print­ed on merch and ready to ship in two to five busi­ness days. Dammit, I would look fire for my one wild and pre­cious life. 

I was high on the dopamine rush that accom­pa­nies impulse buy­ing. For just a moment, the check­out closed the gap between who I am and who I wish myself to be, a spark of hope dis­guised as a transaction.

And then, luck­i­ly, I came to my sens­es and remem­bered that I have plen­ty of hats and sweat­shirts already and that there are far bet­ter uses for $100. I emp­tied the cart and closed the tab.

I’ve been think­ing about that store­front for days. My favorite poet, one who wrote so ten­der­ly about wild geese and lilies and bears and the holi­ness of an ordi­nary morn­ing, has now been turned into a brand. Mary Oliver, who taught us to live sim­ply and look close­ly, whose poems were the anti­dote to the rush and clut­ter of the mod­ern world, is now noth­ing but a mon­e­tized com­mod­i­ty. It feels like watch­ing some­one bot­tle the wind.

Wonder, by nature, doesn’t want to be owned. It wants to expand, to spill over the edges of what we can con­tain. Mary Oliver’s poems ask us to look up from our­selves, to leave the screens, the noise, and the shop­ping carts behind. It’s the ulti­mate con­tra­dic­tion to com­mer­cial­ize the voice that taught rev­er­ence over own­er­ship, pres­ence over pro­duc­tion. The poet who walked through the woods with noth­ing but a note­book and the sky for com­pa­ny would like­ly bris­tle at her words being used to sell any­thing, even them­selves. Her poet­ry invites us to leave behind the “greed and hur­ry” she so often warned against. To see her lan­guage print­ed on a can­vas tote, mass-pro­duced and shipped across oceans, feels a lit­tle like betrayal.

But it is also true that art can­not remain untouched by the world. The moment we love some­thing, we begin to build a ves­sel to car­ry it for­ward. Maybe books, mugs, and totes are the imper­fect boats we use to keep beau­ty afloat in a con­sumer-dri­ven sea. And if a sweat­shirt quot­ing Instructions for Living a Life acts as an entry point for some­one unfa­mil­iar with Oliver’s work, then per­haps it has done a qui­et good. 

In the end, the choice is ours. We can add to the cart and then still go out­side. We can drink from the mug, and still stand at the edge of the pond, lis­ten­ing for the soft sound of the world breath­ing. We can live inside the com­merce and the call­ing, the human and the holy.

So yes, there is irony in the Mary Oliver Store. But there is also grace in it. Each object car­ries the risk of becom­ing a cliché, but also the poten­tial to become a small, dai­ly reminder, a whis­per remind­ing us to Pay atten­tion. Be aston­ished. Tell about it.