Archive for the ‘Mary Oliver’ Tag
Southern Arizona Fence Line — Photo-Artistic by kenne
I would like to write a poem about the world
that has in it, nothing fancy
Like our travels, our workdays
burned upon the world.
And forgetting everything I will leap to name it
as though for the first time
Turning always in my mind toward you,
your slopes, folds, gentle openings.
As a poem or a prayer, can also make
luminous any dark place on earth.
Maybe we’re necessary to each other,
and this vacant place has need of us both.
Calling us back to why, how and whence
such beauty and what the meaning.
To its joy we come together–the seer
and the seen, the eater and the eaten,
the lover and the loved.
— Mary Oliver & Wendell Berry – A Found Poem
(Source: Simply Blessed)
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Snow On Mt. Lemmon, Santa Catalina Mountains — Image by kenne
First Snow
The snow
began here
this morning and all day
continued, its white
rhetoric everywhere
calling us back to why, how,
whence such beauty and what
the meaning; such
an oracular fever! flowing
past windows, an energy it seemed
would never ebb, never settle
less than lovely! and only now,
deep into night,
it has finally ended.
The silence
is immense,
and the heavens still hold
a million candles, nowhere
the familiar things:
stars, the moon,
the darkness we expect
and nightly turn from. Trees
glitter like castles
of ribbons, the broad fields
smolder with light, a passing
creekbed lies
heaped with shining hills;
and though the questions
that have assailed us all day
remain — not a single
answer has been found —
walking out now
into the silence and the light
under the trees,
and through the fields,
feels like one.
— Mary Oliver
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Poudre River Colorado Rockies– Photo-Artistry by kenne
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
— Mary Oliver
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Mt. Lemmon Mushroom — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Poetry is one of the ancient arts,
and it began as did all the fine arts,
within the original wilderness of the earth.
— Mary Oliver
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Cedar Waxwing — Photo-Artistry by kenne
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
— from Dream Work by Mary Oliver
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Digital Image by kenne
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.
— from “What I Have Learned So Far” by Mary Oliver
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Becoming is Superior to Being 