Mary Oliver, poet

 Mary Jane Oliver (September 10, 1935 – January 17, 2019) was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

There are so many of her poems that I just love!

And one should read of her own life as well, to know the source of such beauty! Much of it is described in her poetry.

Of Love

I have been in love more times than one,

thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting

whether active or not. Sometimes

it was all but ephemeral, maybe only

an afternoon, but not less real for that.

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,

or anyway beautiful people to me, of which

there are so many. You, and you, and you,

whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe

missed. Love, love, love, it was the

core of my life, from which, of course, comes

the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned

that some of them were men and some were women

and some — now carry my revelation with you —

were trees. Or places. Or music flying above

the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun

which was the first, and the best, the most

loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into

my eyes, every morning. So I imagine

such love of the world — its fervency, its shining, its

innocence and hunger to give of itself — I imagine

this is how it began.

~Mary Oliver

Blue Iris

Now that I'm free to be myself, who am I?

Can't fly, can't run and see how slowly I walk.

Well, I think, I can read books.

"What's that you're doing?"

the green-headed fly shouts as it buzzes past.

I close the book.

Well, I can write down words, like these, softly.

"What's that you're doing?" whispers the wind, pausing

in a heap just outside the window.

Give me a little time, I say back to its staring, silver face.

It doesn't happen all of a sudden, you know.

"Doesn't it?" says the wind, and breaks open, releasing

distillation of blue iris.

And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be,

the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

~Mary Oliver

From~Blue Iris Poems and Essays

Needing one, I invented her—
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I'd call into the leaves,
and she'd rise up, like an old log in a pool,

and whisper in a language only the two of us knew

the word that meant follow,

and we'd travel

cheerful as birds

out of the dusty town and into the trees

where she would change us into something quicker—

two foxes with black feet,

two snakes green as ribbons,

two shimmering fish—and all day we'd travel.

At day's end she'd leave me back at my own door

with the rest of my family,

who were kind, but solid as wood

and rarely wandered. While she,

old twist of feathers and birch bark,

would walk in circles wide as rain and then

float back

scattering the rags of twilight

on fluttering moth wings;

or she'd slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;
or she'd hang in the milky moonlight

burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,

this old woman made out of leaves.

Mary Oliver, (from Twelve Moons)

“For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.”

~ Mary Oliver - Rest In Peace

Don't Hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don’t hesitate.

Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left.

Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,

that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

~Mary Oliver

Sleeping In The Forest

I thought the earth remembered me, she

took me back so tenderly, arranging

her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds. I slept

as never before, a stone

on the riverbed, nothing

between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated

light as moths among the branches

of the perfect trees. All night

I heard the small kingdoms breathing

around me, the insects, and the birds

who do their work in the darkness. All night

I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling

with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

~Mary Oliver

Praying. It doesn’t have to be the blue iris, it could be weeds in a vacant lot, or a few small stones; just pay attention, then patch a few words together and don’t try to make them elaborate, this isn’t a contest but the doorway into thanks, and a silence in which another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver