The idea appealed to me instantly. What about offering a winter reading near January’s end from a favorite poet’s work and in celebration of the rising light? Over two added minutes per days!

The Cathance River Education Alliance, leader of education programs for the Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust, sponsors a monthly winter/spring talk series, and the Jan. 28 date was open. This year’s theme — “Voices From and For the Land” — brought to mind two writers who have shaped my writing and teaching lives, Mary Oliver and Henry Thoreau.

And so I set about preparing a reading of poems from Oliver, my favorite poet. I had met Oliver in the early ’90s, when Appalachia, the journal I edited, began to publish some of her work. Over time, I grew to know her work, and I meant the reading as a winter gift to anyone who showed up at the Curtis Memorial Library’s Morrell Room early in the evening on the 28th. Once committed, I wondered, as we all do, what now?

I began to read. Which, I reminded myself as I walked down into the town commons on a cold afternoon, is a gift akin to walking. Linear lines of words; slightly wandering lines of footprints. The walker and the writer and the reader know each other as siblings.

Poets and walkers exhibit patience when they do their work well, and I knew that Mary Oliver, who died in 2019 after a distinguished writing career, was among the most patient foot-people. Her habit of going out every morning into the pre-dawn brought her visions and contact elusive to most of us.

But beyond her devotion to early hours, which promised an absence of other people, Oliver had an astonishing ability to remain quiet and observant. To the point where the other lives abroad in that world often simply noted her presence and kept on with their lives unbothered.

When Mary sat by a pond or on the side of a sand dune near her Provincetown home, she was not serving time, waiting for some action; she was, instead, “paying attention.” And as the place grew accustomed to her presence, to her calm, it and its characters resumed their lives. The hush that we occasion on arrival in a wild place began to fill in with songs, voices, padded steps, perhaps the whisper of curiosity. Few of us from our apex-predator species can say the same.

All of this returned to me as I prepared my talk. What surprised me, when it came time for that talk in the Curtis Memorial Library’s Morrell Meeting Room, was the intensity of my return to a form of teaching. In a variety of settings, for more than 40 years, I had stood before, sat among and walked with students, almost all of them teenagers. Almost always attentive, they were also a wild bunch … simply by nature, and over time, I felt my presence and teaching shift. I found myself moving in Oliver’s direction, paying more and more attention, offering only necessary direction.

Instead of educating my “students,” I would learn about them, become finally — I hoped — attuned to what they hoped for, what they could do and what they needed to learn. Their curiosity and hope to “become” was all the fuel they needed … most of the time; it was then up to me to figure them out.

As you may guess, I lectured infrequently, but I read aloud often, asked that they do so in return. I wanted our voices to gain balance, have depth, find, finally, good words for what we knew or thought we knew.

All of this returned to me as I picked up poem after poem from Mary Oliver’s many books and read each aloud. And as the hour deepened so too did the quality of listening. Oliver’s voice, I hoped and thought, had found another audience. What a pleasure to teach again, a little bit, for a little bit, and to be in the presence of such listening.

At talk’s end, I cited Mary Oliver and two companion minds from across time: “Attention is the beginning of devotion,” Oliver had written. And from a distance in my mind, I heard, “Only that day dawns to which we are awake” (Thoreau), and, “Absolute attention is prayer” (Simone Weil).

Just so.

Community note: The next presentation in Voices From and For the Land takes place at 6 p.m. on Feb. 27 at the Topsham Public Library. Students from Rebecca Norklun’s Advanced Biology Class at Mt. Ararat High School will talk about their field research that pairs them with professional scientists and sends them our into the “field” to investigate various bio-questions. (For a field report, see this column’s November article, “Looking down, digging in.”

Sandy Stott is a Brunswick resident, chairperson of the town’s Conservation Commission, chairperson of the Mere Brook Steering Committee and a member of Brunswick-Topsham Land Trust’s Board of Directors. He writes for a variety of publications. He may be reached at fsandystott@gmail.com.