Mary Oliver
"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.
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"One or Two Things"
(excerpt)
The god of dirt
came to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things, I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now,
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(+)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single
friend,
for they are all smilers and
talkers and therefore unsuitable.
I don't really want to be witnessed talking to the
catbirds,
or hugging the old black oak tree.
I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours.
Besides, when I am alone I can become
invisible,
I can sit, on the top of a dune,
as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes
run by unconcerned.
I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses
singing.
If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must
love you very much.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(+)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Crossing the Swamp"
Here is the endless
wet thick
cosmos, the center
of everything—the nugget
of dense sap, branching
vines, the dark burred
faintly belching
bogs. Here
is swamp, here
is struggle,
closure—
pathless, seamless,
peerless mud. My bones
knock together at the pale
joints, trying
for foothold, fingerhold,
mindhold over
such slick crossings, deep
hipholes, hummocks
that sink silently
into the black, slack
earthsoup. I feel
not wet so much as
painted and glittered
with the fat grassy
mires, the rich
and succulent marrows
of earth—a poor
dry stick given
one more chance by the whims
of swamp water—a bough
that still, after all these years,
could take root,
sprout, branch out, bud—
make of its life a breathing
palace of leaves.
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