listen and watch

Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look 

    up into that blue space?

Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.

And don't worry about what language you use, 

God no doubt understands them all.

Even when the swans are flying north and making 

such a ruckus of noise, God is surely listening

    and understanding.

Rumi said, There is no proof of the soul.

But isn't the return of spring and how it

springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?

Yes, I know, God's silence never breaks, but is

    that really a problem?

There are thousands of voices, after all.

And furthermore, don't you imagine (I just suggest it)

that the swans know about as much as we do about 

    the whole business?

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly.

Take from it what you can.

Mary Oliver

"Whistling Swans"

Photo: Peter Bowers

don't hesitate

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,

don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty

of lives and whole towns destroyed or about

to be. We are not wise, and not very often

kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this

is its way of fighting back, that sometimes

something happens better than all the riches

or power in the world. It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant

when love begins. Anyway, that's often the

case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid

of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Mary Oliver

Photo: Peter Bowers

mysteries, yes

 

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous

to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the

mouths of the lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity

while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the

scars of damage,

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,

and bow their heads.

Mary Oliver

to begin with, the sweet grass

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat

  of the sweet grass?

Will the owl bite off its own wings?

Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or

  forget to sing?

Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say - behold

the reliability and the finery and the teachings

  of this gritty earth gift.

2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.

Drink water, and understand delight.

Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets

  are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds

who are drinking the sweetness, who are

  thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.

Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star

both intimate and ultimate,

and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:

oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two

beautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.

The witchery of living

is my whole conversation

with you, my darlings

All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.

This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.

It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.

It's more than the beating of the single heart.

It's praising.

It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.

You have a life - just imagine that!

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

  still another.

4.

Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,

the dancer, the potter,

to make me a begging bowl

which I believe

my soul needs.

And if I come to you,

to the door of your comfortable house

with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,

will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.

I would like to give you this chance.

5.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we

  change.

Congratulations, if

  you have changed.

6.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that beauty exists for some

  fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure -

  your life -

what would do for you?

7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.

Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.

That was many years ago.

Since then I have gone out from my confinements,

  though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.

I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.

They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment

somehow or another.)

And I have become the child of clouds, and of hope.

I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,

I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?

Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

Mary Oliver

Evidence

photo:  Peter Bowers

the teachers

Owl in the black morning,
   mockingbird in the burning
      slants of the sunny afternoon
         declare so simply

to the world
   everything I have tried but still
      haven't been able
         to put into words,

so I do not go
   far from that school
      with its star-bright
         or blue ceiling,

and I listen to those teachers,
   and others too -
      the wind in the trees
         and the water waves -

for they are what lead me
   from the dryness of self
      where I labor
         with the mind-steps of language -

lonely, as we all are
   in the singular,
      I listen hard
         to the exuberances

of the mockingbird and the owl,
   the waves and the wind.
      And then, like peace after perfect speech,
         such stillness.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

the buddha's last instruction

"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
signal - a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might of said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire -
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.




Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

the first time percy came back

The first time Percy came back
he was not sailing on a cloud.
He was loping along the sand as though
he had come a great way.
"Percy," I cried out, and reached to him -
               those white curls -
but he was unreachable.  As music
is present yet you can't touch it.
"Yes, it's all different," he said.
"You're going to be very surprised."
But I wasn't thinking of that. I only
wanted to hold him. "Listen," he said,
"I miss that too.
And now you'll be telling stories
               of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true,
but they'll be real."
And then, as he used to, he said, "Let's go!"
And we walked down the beach together.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

white heron rises over blackwater

I wonder
    what it is
        that I will accomplish
            today

if anything
    can be called
        that marvelous word.
            It won't be

my kind of work,
    which is only putting
        words on a page,
            the pencil

haltingly calling up
    the light of the world,
        yet nothing appearing on paper
            half as bright

as the mockingbird's
    verbal hilarity
        in the still unleafed shrub
            in the churchyard -

or the white heron
    rising
        over the swamp
            and the darkness,

his yellow eyes
    and broad wings wearing
        the light of the world
            in the world -

ah yes, I see him.
    He is exactly
        the poem
            I wanted to write.






Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

   

both worlds

Forever busy, it seems,
with words,
finally
I put the pen down

and crumple
most of the sheets
and leave one or two,
sometimes a few,

for the next morning.
Day after day -
year after year -
it has gone on this way,

I rise from the chair,
I put on my jacket
and leave the house
for that other world -

the first one,
the holy one -
where the trees say
nothing the toad says

nothing the dirt
says nothing and yet
what has always happened
keeps happening:

the trees flourish,
the toad leaps,
and out of the silent dirt
the blood - red roses rise.




Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

As for life,
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say
how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,
and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched
though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen -
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort -
along with human love,
dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about
stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,
and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.

As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?





Mary Oliver
Photo: Peter Bowers

The Messenger

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird  —
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still  and learning to be
 astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.








Mary Oliver
Photos:  Peter Bowers

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety -

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light -
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

What is There Beyond Knowing

What is there beyond knowing that keeps

calling to me?  I can't

turn in any direction

but it's there.  I don't mean

the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's

silk song, but the far off

fires, for example,

of the stars, heaven's slowly turning

theater of light, or the wind

playful with its breath;

or time that's always rushing forward,

or standing still

in the same - what shall I say -

moment.

What I know

I could put into a pack

as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it

on one shoulder,

important and honourable, but so small!

While everything else continues, unexplained

and unexplainable.  How wonderful it is

to follow a thought quietly

to its logical end. 

I have done this a few times.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,

in the middle of the world, breathing

in and out.  Life so far doesn't have any other name

but breath and light, wind and rain.

If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet. 

I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass

and the weeds.

Mary Oliver

On Meditating, Sort Of

Meditation, so I've heard, is best accomplished

if you entertain a certain strict posture.

Frankly, I prefer just to lounge under a tree.

So why should I think I could ever be successful?

Some days I fall asleep, or land in that

even better place - half-asleep - where the  world,

spring, summer, autumn, winter - 

flies through my mind in its

hard ascent and its uncompromising descent.

So I just lie like that, while distance and time

reveal their true attitudes:   they never

heard of me, and never will, or ever need to.

Of course I wake up finally

thinking, how wonderful to be who I am,

made out of earth and water,

my own thoughts, my own fingerprints - 

all that glorious,  temporary stuff.

Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

The Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird  — 

equal seekers of sweetness.

Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.

Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?

Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me 

keep my mind on what matters, 

which is my work,

which is mostly standing still  and learning to be

 astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium. 

The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.

Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart

and these body-clothes, 

a mouth with which to give shouts of joy 

to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, 

telling them all, over and over, how it is 

that we live forever.



Mary Oliver 

Photos:  Peter Bowers

Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Every year we have been

witness to it:  how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay, 

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

I don't say

it's easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east, 

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers

And Bob Dylan Too

"Anything worth thinking about is worth

singing about."

Which is why we have 

songs of praise, songs of love, songs

of sorrow.

Songs to the gods, who have

so many names.

Songs the shepherds sing, on the

lonely mountains, while the sheep

are honoring the grass, by eating it.

The dance-songs of the bees, to tell

where the flowers, suddenly, in the

morning light, have opened.

A chorus of many, shouting to heaven,

or at it, or pleading.

Or that greatest of love affairs, a violin

and a human body.

And a composer, maybe hundreds of years dead.

I think of Schubert, scribbling on a cafe

napkin.

Thank you, thank you.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Morgan

I worried

I worried a lot.  Will the garden grow, will the rivers

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

can do it, and I am, well, 

hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

am I going to get rheumatism,

lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

And gave it up.  And took my old body

and went out into the morning,

and sang.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Morgan

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.





Mary Oliver

Beside the Waterfall

At dawn

the big dog - 

Winston by name - 

reached down

into the leaves - tulips and willows mostly - 

beside the white 

waterfall, 

and dragged out, 

into plain sight, 

a fawn, 

it was scarcely larger

than a rabbit, 

and thankfully,

it was dead.

Winston

looked over the

delicate, spotted body and then

deftly

tackled

the beautiful flower-like head,

breaking it and

breaking it off and

swallowing it.

All the while this was happening

it was growing lighter.

When I called to him

Winston merely looked up.

Grizzled around the chin

and with kind eyes,

he, too, if you're willing

had a face like a flower; and then the red sun

which had been raising all the while anyway,

broke

clear of the trees and dropped its wild, clawed light

over everything. 

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers