Children, It’s Spring
by Mary Oliver

And this is the lady
Whom everyone loves,
Ms. Violet
in her purple gown

Or, on special occasions,
A dress the color
Of sunlight. She sits
In the mossy weeds and waits

To be noticed.
She loves dampness.
She loves attention.
She loves especially

To be picked by careful fingers,
Young fingers, entranced
By what has happened
To the world.

We, the older ones,
Call in Spring,
And we have been through it
Many times.

But there is still nothing
Like the children bringing home
Such happiness
In their small hands.

Thirst
Mary Oliver

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowly learning.

The Waterfall by Mary Oliver

For all they said,

I could not see the waterfall

until I came and saw the water falling,

its lace legs and its womanly arms sheeting down,

while something howled like thunder,

over the rocks,

all day and all night –

unspooling

like ribbons made of snow,

or god’s white hair.

At any distance

it fell without a break or seam, and slowly, a simple

preponderance –

a fall of flowers – and truly it seemed

surprised by the unexpected kindness of the air and

light-hearted to be

flying at last.

Gravity is a fact everybody

knows about.

It is always underfoot,

like a summons,

gravel-backed and mossy,

in every beetled basin –

and imagination –

that striver,

that third eye –

can do a lot but

hardly everything. The white, scrolled

wings of the tumbling water

I never could have

imagined. And maybe there will be,

after all,

some slack and perfectly balanced

blind and rough peace, finally,

in the deep and green and utterly motionless pools after all that

falling?

Poem
By Mary Oliver

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body’s world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is–

so it enters us–
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

Stars
By Mary Oliver

Here in my head, language
keeps making its tiny noises.
How can I hope to be friends
with the hard white stars
whose flaring and hissing are not speech
but pure radiance?
How can I hope to be friends
with the yawning spaces between them
where nothing, ever is spoken?
Tonight, at the edge of the field,
I stood very still, and looked up,
and tried to be empty of words.
What joy was it, that almost found me?
What amiable peace?…
Once, deep in the woods,
I found the white skull of a bear
and it was utterly silent-
and once a river otter, in a steel trap,
and it too was utterly silent.
What can we do
but keep on breathing in and out,
modest and wiling, and in our places?
Listen, listen, I’m forever saying.
Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,
to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit-
then I come up with a few words, like a gift.
Even as now
Even as the darkness has remains the pure, deep darkness.
Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,
looking up,
one hot sentence after another.

SUNRISE
BY MARY OLIVER

You can
die for it–
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

The Measure
By Mary Oliver

I stopped the car and ran back and across the road
and picked up the box turtle, who only
hissed and withdrew herself into her pretty shell.
Well, goodness, it was early in the morning, not too much traffic.
Rather an adventure than a risk, and anyway
who would give aid to such a shy citizen?
Who wouldn’t complete the journey for it, taking it of course
in the direction of its desire: a pinewoods
where, as I learned, the blueberries ripen early.
Probably she had thought, in the middle of the night-
Ah, it’s time.
Sometimes I think our own lives are watched over like that.
Out of the mystery of the hours and the days
Something says-Let’s give this one a little trial.
Let’s say, put a turtle in the road she’s traveling on, and
in a hurry.
Let’s see how her life is measuring up, that lucky girl.
So much happiness, so much good fortune. Ah, it’s time.

Boundaries
By Mary Oliver

There is a place where the town ends,

And the fields begin.

It’s not marked but the feet know it,

Also the heart that is longing for refreshment

And, equally, for repose.

Someday we’ll live in the sky.

Meanwhile, the house of our lives is this green world.

The fields, the ponds, the birds.

The thick black oaks-surely they are

The invention of something wonderful.

And the tiger lilies.

And the runaway honeysuckle that no one

Will ever trim again.

Where is it? I ask, and then

My feet know it.

One jump, and I’m home.

Gift of Life
By Drea

Golden scar
fill open space
with strength.

Eye of beauty
reflect passion
trust the path of sun.

Are we built of starlight?
Who are we now that the earth plate shifts?
Can we conspire with an atom to mingle our gift of life?

Flight Path of Dragonfly
By Drea

If the flight path of a dragonfly
brought your spirit home
I would know your voice,
feel your hand,
understand your thought.

If the hummingbird wing
kept time for your heart beat
I would keep your vulnerable
nature close to my core.

When the butterfly kiss
whisper in your ear
from silky eyelash and salty tear
I will sing your song.