Quotes
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I had a dogwho loved flowers. Briskly she wentthrough the fields, yet pausedfor the honeysuckleor the rose, her dark headand her wet nosetouchingthe faceof every onewith its petalsof silkwith its fragrancerisinginto the airwhere the bees, their bodiesheavy with pollenhovered -and easilyshe adoredevery blossomnot in the seriouscareful waythat we choosethis blossom or that blossomthe way we praise or don't praise -the way we loveor don't love -but the waywe long to be -that happyin the heaven...
Mary Oliver
from the complications of loving you i think there is no end or return. no answer, no coming out of it. which is the only way to love, isn't it? this isn't a playground, this is earth, our heaven, for a while. therefore i have given precedence to all my sudden, sullen, dark moods that hold you in the center of my world. and i say to my body: grow thinner still. and i say to my fingers, type me a pretty song. and i say to my heart: rave on.
Mary Oliver
When death comes….
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what it’s going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body as...
Mary Oliver
Landscape
Isn't it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about
spiritual patience? Isn't it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?
Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.
Every morning, so far, I'm alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky—as...
Mary Oliver
I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pocketsfull of lichens and seeds. I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed, nothing between me and the white fire of the starsbut my thoughts, and they floated light as mothsamong the branches of the perfect trees. All night I heard the small kingdomsbreathing 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...
Mary Oliver
for how many years have you gone through the houseshutting the windows, while the rain was still five miles awayand veering, o plum-colored clouds, to the northaway from youand you did not even know enoughto be sorry, you were gladthose silver sheets, with the occasional golden staple, were sweeping on, elsewhere, violent and electric and uncontrollable--and will you find yourself finally wanting to forgetall enclosures, includingthe enclosure of yourself, o lonely leaf, and will youdash...
Mary Oliver
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