Writing about the intricacies of nature, in “Black Oaks” Mary Oliver writes, describing these old and peaceful trees. She is trying to explain why it is that they are so important to her – even after she admits what all they cannot do. She seeks to regard them as people, giving them characteristics: shoulders, and hair with thick bodies. Through personification she gives importance to the Oaks and to her relationship with them – making them into more of a friend than an object of desire. But, if she is with them in the moment of the poem, why is it that the poem implies that they will or are often separated? Why is it that she will be away from them to miss them? To answer this, ambition enters into the view, concerned that she is not doing enough, telling her she needs to get moving – away from the Oaks. Her response is not that she won’t leave, that seems to be an inevitability, but instead that she would rather stay a bit, be idle there with the Oaks. Tomorrow, or later today perhaps, she will return to “sell[ing] her life for money,” as much as she doesn't want to, but for now she would rather just relax in the peace of nature. If life is how a person spends their life-time, then trading a life for money would only be negative – something to resist – if the way she spends her life was not fitting for her – if it were not enjoyable. In that way she is being torn between her soul – her purpose in the world/ her identity in the place of things – and the worldly necessities.

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Black Oaks

Mary Oliver

Okay, not one can write a symphony, or a dictionary,

or even a letter to an old friend, full of remembrance
and comfort.

Not one can manage a single sound though the blue jays
carp and whistle all day in the branches, without
the push of the wind.

But to tell the truth after a while I'm pale with longing
for their thick bodies ruckled with lichen

and you can't keep me from the woods, from the tonnage

of their shoulders, and their shining green hair.

Today is a day like any other: twenty-four hours, a
little sunshine, a little rain.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from
one boot to another -- why don't you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists
of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money,

I don't even want to come in out of the rain.

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