Posts tagged Mary Oliver.

[Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.]

And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.

Mary Oliver, from “When I Am Among Trees”
#Mary Oliver  #When I Am Among Trees  #poetry  #lit  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  April 28, 2012
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[For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.]
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

Mary Oliver, from “One or Two Things”
#Mary Oliver  #One or Two Things  #poetry  #lit  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  April 11, 2012
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[Are there trees near you,
and does your own soul need comforting?]
Quick, then— open the door and fly on your heavy feet; the song
may already be drifting away.

Mary Oliver, from “Such Singing in the Wild Branches”
#Mary Oliver  #Such Singing in the Wild Branches  #poetry  #lit  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  March 18, 2012
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[There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.]
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Mary Oliver, from “Spring”
#Mary Oliver  #Spring  #poetry  #lit  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  March 09, 2012
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Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving,
which is the way I walked on,
softly,
through the pale-pink morning light.

Mary Oliver, from “Bone”
#poetry  #lit  #Mary Oliver  #Bone  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  February 22, 2012
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“[Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision— a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes to let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry.] Yes, indeed.”

Mary Oliver, from A Poetry Handbook

#poetry  #lit  #prose  #Mary Oliver  #A Poetry Handbook  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  January 07, 2012
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Be ignited, or be gone.

Mary Oliver, from “What I Have Learned So Far”
#poetry  #lit  #Mary Oliver  #What I Have Learned So Far  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  December 25, 2011
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I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

Mary Oliver, from “Lead”
#poetry  #lit  #Mary Oliver  #Lead  
Posted by growing-orbits
∞  November 18, 2011
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