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Three clear poems by mary oliver

 Mary Oliver (1935-2019)

 

Oliver lived a profoundly simple life: she went on long walks through the woods and along the shoreline nearly every day, foraging for both greens and poetic material.

With her consistent, shimmering reverence for flora and fauna, Oliver made herself one of the most beloved poets of her generation. She worked in the Romantic tradition of Wordsworth or Keats, but she also infused a distinctly American loneliness into her words—the solitary reflections of Thoreau gazing over a lake, or of Whitman peering from the Brooklyn Ferry at the shuffling tides below his feet. Hers were not poems about isolation, though, but about pushing beyond your own sense of emotional quarantine, even when you feel fear. Everywhere you look, in Oliver’s verse, you find threads of connectivity.

-- Obituary from the New Yorker, January 19, 2019

https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/mary-oliver-helped-us-stay-amazed

 

Moments

 

There are moments that cry out to be fulfilled.

Like, telling someone you love them.

Or giving your money away, all of it.

 

Your heart is beating, isn’t it?

You’re not in chains, are you?

 

There is nothing more pathetic than caution

when headlong might save a life,

even, possibly, your own.

 

-- From Felicity (2015)

                                                                     ***

 

Song for taking chances, plug for spontaneous acts

 

                                                                     ***

 

The World I Live In

 

I have refused to live

locked in the orderly house of

reasons and proofs;

The world I live in and believe in

is wider than that. And anyway.

what’s wrong with Maybe?

 

You wouldn’t believe what once or

twice I have seen. I’ll just

tell you this:

only if there are angels in your head will you

ever, possibly, see one.

 

-- From Felicity (2015)

                                                       ***

 

The compelling pull of not-knowing – Keats’ negative capability – being comfortable in ambiguity (inside maybe)

 

                                                       ***

 

Believing is seeing

I’m reminded of Wordsworth –

The mind is lord and master—outward sense

The obedient servant of her will.

 

-- from The Prelude


                                                     ***


Do the Trees Speak?

 

Do the trees speak back to the wind

When the wind offers some inivitational comment?

As some of us do, do they also talk to the sun?

I believe so, and if such belief need rest on

              evidence, let me just say, Sometimes it’s

              an earful.

 

But there’s more.

 

If you can hear the trees in their easy hours

Of course you can also hear them later,

              crying out at the sawmill.

 

-- From Felicity (2015)

                                                                     ***

 

The poet hears music – poem about listening, being ear-full

 

                                                                     ***

 

But there’s more – like in the first poem - The world I live in and believe in / is wider than that

 

                                                                     ***

 

The tree is a sentient being, just like us – they cry out at the sawmill

 

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