the death of Mary Oliver

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (M. Oliver)

It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world. (M. Oliver)

Do you love this world? Do you cherish your humble and silky life? Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath? (M. Oliver)

I was deeply saddened to read that Mary Oliver died today. Her poetry and way of looking at the world, especially at nature, uplifted and sustained me. (see New York Times obituary below). She was an American poet who won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Maybe death isn’t darkness, after all, but so much light wrapping itself around us. (M. Oliver)

A favorite poem entitled 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 your 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.

a beautiful poem

WILD GEESE by Mary Oliver

 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.

If you’re wondering who the author is, Mary Oliver is an American poet who has won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Born in Maple Heights, Ohio in 1935, she attended Vassar College and Ohio State University.

Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.