Mary Oliver

All summer I wandered the fields That were thickening Every morning, Every rainfall, With weeds and blossoms, With the long loops Of the shimmering, and the extravagant- Pale as flames they rose And fell

The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes, Shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning In the blue branches of the world. It

The mosquito is so small It takes almost nothing to ruin it. Each leaf, the same. And the black ant, hurrying. So many lives, so many fortunes! Every morning, I walk softly and with

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready To break my heart As the sun rises, As the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers And they open – Pools

His beak could open a bottle, And his eyes – when he lifts their soft lids – Go on reading something Just beyond your shoulder – Blake, maybe, Or the Book of Revelation. Never

Out of the sump rise the marigolds. From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes, Rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth. Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica, The withered acres of

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

Listen, whatever it is you try To do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you Like the dreams of your body, Its spirit Longing to fly while the dead-weight bones Toss their dark

Cold now. Close to the edge. Almost Unbearable. Clouds Bunch up and boil down From the north of the white bear. This tree-splitting morning I dream of his fat tracks, The lifesaving suet. I

Have you ever seen Anything In your life More wonderful Than the way the sun, Every evening, Relaxed and easy, Floats toward the horizon And into the clouds or the hills, Or the rumpled

On a summer morning I sat down On a hillside To think about God – A worthy pastime. Near me, I saw A single cricket; It was moving the grains of the hillside This

Over the local stations, one by one, Announcers list disasters like dark poems That always happen in the skull of winter. But once again the storm has passed us by: Lovely and moderate, the

When the blackberries hang Swollen in the woods, in the brambles Nobody owns, I spend All day among the high Branches, reaching My ripped arms, thinking Of nothing, cramming The black honey of summer

There’s a bear in the Truro woods. People have seen it – three or four, Or two, or one. I think Of the thickness of the serious woods Around the dark bowls of the

It was spring And finally I heard him Among the first leaves – Then I saw him clutching the limb In an island of shade With his red-brown feathers All trim and neat for

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 river bed,

What men build, in the name of security, is built of straw. * Does the grain of sand know it is a grain of sand? * My dog Ben a mouth like a tabernacle.

We must begin to catch hold of everything Around us, for nobody knows what we May need. We have to carry along The air, even; and the weight we once Thought a burden turns

I am watching the white gannets Blaze down into the water With the power of blunt spears And a stunning accuracy Even though the sea is riled and boiling And gray with fog And

The kingfisher rises out of the black wave Like a blue flower, in his beak He carries a silver leaf. I think this is The prettiest world so long as you don’t mind A

What is so utterly invisible As tomorrow? Not love, Not the wind, Not the inside of a stone. Not anything. And yet, how often I’m fooled I’m wading along In the sunlight And I’m

“Make of yourself a light” Said the Buddha, Before he died. I think of this every morning As the east begins To tear off its many clouds Of darkness, to send up the first

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean The one who has flung herself out of the grass, The one who is

Last night, an owl In the blue dark Tossed An indeterminate number Of carefully shaped sounds into The world, in which, A quarter of a mile away, I happened To be standing. I couldn’t

It is possible, I suppose that sometime We will learn everything There is to learn: what the world is, for example, And what it means. I think this as I am crossing From one

Night after night Darkness Enters the face Of the lily Which, lightly, Closes its five walls Around itself, And its purse Of honey, And its fragrance, And is content To stand there In the

In April The ponds open Like black blossoms, The moon Swims in every one; There’s fire Everywhere: frogs shouting Their desire, Their satisfaction. What We know: that time Chops at us all like an

So heavy Is the long-necked, long-bodied heron, Always it is a surprise When her smoke-colored wings Open And she turns From the thick water, From the black sticks Of the summer pond, And slowly

Another year gone, leaving everywhere Its rich spiced residues: vines, leaves, The uneaten fruits crumbling damply In the shadows, unmattering back From the particular island Of this summer, this NOW, that now is nowhere

The first fish I ever caught Would not lie down Quiet in the pail But flailed and sucked At the burning Amazement of the air And died In the slow pouring off Of rainbows.

Three miles through the woods Clapp’s Pond sprawls stone gray Among oaks and pines, The late winter fields Where a pheasant blazes up Lifting his yellow legs Under bronze feathers, opening Bronze wings; And

She sends me news of blue jays, frost, Of stars and now the harvest moon That rides above the stricken hills. Lightly, she speaks of cold, of pain, And lists what is already lost.

In the afternoon I watched The she-bear; she was looking For the secret bin of sweetness – Honey, that the bees store In the trees’ soft caves. Black block of gloom, she climbed down

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of

The dark things of the wood Are coming from their caves, Flexing muscle. They browse the orchard, Nibble the sea of grasses Around our yellow rooms, Scarcely looking in To see what we are

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,

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

It fills you with the soft Essence of vanished flowers, it becomes A trickle sharp as a hair that you follow From the honey pot over the table And out the door and over

Once, in summer In the blueberries, I fell asleep, and woke When a deer stumbled against me. I guess She was so busy with her own happiness She had grown careless And was just

At Great Pond The sun, rising, Scrapes his orange breast On the thick pines, And down tumble A few orange feathers into The dark water. On the far shore A white bird is standing

Some kind of relaxed and beautiful thing Kept flickering in with the tide And looking around. Black as a fisherman’s boot, With a white belly. If you asked for a picture I would have

Who doesn’t love Roses, and who Doesn’t love the lilies Of the black ponds Floating like flocks Of tiny swans, And of course, the flaming Trumpet vine Where the hummingbird comes Like a small

Every day I see or hear Something That more or less Kills me With delight, That leaves me Like a needle In the haystack Of light. It was what I was born for –

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know What kind, that glimmers By mid-May In the forest, just As the pink mocassin flowers Are rising. If you notice anything, It leads you to