"I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.
“How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them” by Mary Oliver, from Dog Songs. © Penguin, 2013
Everyday
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 —
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
“Mindful” by Mary Oliver from Why I Wake Early. © Beacon Press, 2005.
Ocean
I am in love with Ocean
lifting her thousands of white hats
in the chop of the storm,
or lying smooth and blue, the
loveliest bed in the world.
In the personal life, there is
always grief more than enough,
a heart-load for each of us
on the dusty road. I suppose
there is a reason for this, so I will be
patient, acquiescent. But I will live
nowhere except here, by Ocean, trusting
equally in all the blast and welcome
of her sorrowless, salt self.
– Mary Oliver, from Red Bird
***
After Her Death
I am trying to find the lesson
for tomorrow. Matthew something.
Which lectionary? I have not
forgotten the Way, but, a little,
the way to the Way. The trees keep whispering
peace, peace, and the birds
in the shallows are full of the
bodies of small fish and are
content. They open their wings
so easily, and fly. It is still
possible.
I open the book
which the strange, difficult, beautiful church
has given me. To Matthew. Anywhere.
– Mary Oliver, from Thirst
***
~ For Hannah, with love and peace today, and always. Shine on.
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 eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
from New and Selected Poems, 1992
Beacon Press, Boston, MA
Copyright 1992 by Mary Oliver
“Summer Breeze” by Seals and Croft
Wild Geese
after Mary Oliver
by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz
You don’t have to be crushed
under the spokes of your own desire
to be proven worthy enough.
The trophies of your hard work don’t
have to appear so freshly on your body.
Your clothes need not be torn.
Every night, you worry a new bird’s nest
from your hair. Every night, your dreams
grind you under her boot heel.
Your pendulum heart doesn’t need
to swing so hard in either direction.
Nails don’t have to be bitten to the nub.
You have to believe that the ground will
materialize under your feet the moment
you step forward. No one can tell you
if it will be rock gravel, or slick with pain.
No one can travel this road before you do.
It is yours, and it is beautiful because of it.
“Wild Geese: after Mary Oliver” by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, via The Bakery.
Words ... for the Time Being 