Category: Mary Oliver

Oh Mary Oliver, you are a hippie poet extraordinaire. I love how you put this: “there is still/ somewhere deep within you/ a beast shouting that the earth/ is exactly what it wanted”.

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches —
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead–
if it’s all you can do
to keep on trudging–

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted–

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

I thought about this Mary Oliver poem the other day and wondered why I never posted it last year. I’d say that this one and the one below are her two most well-known poems, heavily used in the sort of “serenity now” inspirational sites that include pictures of waterfalls. But at least people are reading poems, right?

The Journey

One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice …
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
‘Mend my life!’ each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.

You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations …
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough,
and a wild night, and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.

But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,
determined to do the only thing you could do,
determined to save the only life you could save.

Here’s something about nature and mindfulness (yoga word!)to ponder today, as we sit in our offices…

Yes! No! by Mary Oliver

How necessary it is to have opinions! I think the spotted trout
lilies are satisfied, standing a few inches above the earth. I
think serenity is not something you just find in the world,
like a plum tree, holding up its white petals.

The violets, along the river, are opening their blue faces, like
small dark lanterns.

The green mosses, being so many, are as good as brawny.

How important it is to walk along, not in haste but slowly,
looking at everything and calling out

Yes! No! The

swan, for all his pomp, his robes of grass and petals, wants
only to be allowed to live on the nameless pond. The catbrier
is without fault. The water thrushes, down among the sloppy
rocks, are going crazy with happiness. Imagination is better
than a sharp instrument. To pay attention, this is our endless
and proper work.

Here’s something from Mary Oliver that the Writer’s Almanac had posted last weekend. It works in birds, and winter, and being a better person–just right.

Starlings in Winter
by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

…The Writer’s Almanac puts up a Mary Oliver poem about the uncertainty of tomorrow. But it’s a nice poem.

Walking to Oak-Head Pond, and Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks

by Mary Oliver

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled-
I’m wading along

in the sunlight-
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead-
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon-
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from-
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind-

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage-
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.