RIP Mary Oliver

I have loved many of her poems.  Her words reach people and touch their hearts with her truth.

Here are two that I like - I didn't include the most well-known ones:

The Moths

 

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know

what kind, that glimmers

by mid-May

in the forest, just

as the pink moccasin flowers

are rising.

 

If you notice anything,

It leads you to notice

more

and more.

 

And anyway

I was so full of energy.

I was always running around, looking

at this and that.

 

If I stopped

the pain

was unbearable.

 

If I stopped and thought, maybe

the world

can’t be saved,

the pain

was unbearable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Dream of Trees

 

There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,

 A quiet house, some green and modest acres

 A little way from every troubling town,

 A little way from factories, schools, laments.

 I would have time, I thought, and time to spare,

 With only streams and birds for company,

 To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.

 And then it came to me, that so was death,

 A little way away from everywhere.

 

There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.

 But let it go. Homesick for moderation,

 Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.

 If any find solution, let him tell it.

 Meanwhile I bend my heart toward lamentation

 Where, as the times implore our true involvement,

 The blades of every crisis point the way.

 

I would it were not so, but so it is.

 Who ever made music of a mild day?

 

 

When I am among trees

 

When I am among the trees,

especially the willows and the honey locust,

equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,

they give off such hints of gladness.

 

 

 

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,

in which I have goodness, and discernment,

and never hurry through the world

but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves

and call out, “Stay awhile.”

 

The light flows from their branches.

 And they call again, “It’s simple,”

they say, “and you, too, have come

 into the world to do this, to go easy,

to be filled with light, and to shine.”

 

 

 

The poem about moths led me to look for a good photo, which then led me to find this other photo, and learn that some moths drink the tears of sleeping birds.  That stays with me.