Poems by Mary Oliver
Sometime between the pandemic year in 2020 and now, I came across the works and conversations of American poet Mary Oliver.
Her strong, calm and peaceful voice struck a chord with me. Her poems are simple to understand yet deeply spiritual.
One walks away affirmed that simple honest truths and finding simple joys in everyday living are all worthwhile things to pursue and cherish.
At least that was how I felt when I encountered her work.
She passed away a few years ago in 2019 at age 83 of lymphoma. Here are a few of her poems I have chosen for you to read and reflect. I hope you let her poems and gentle soul touch you and move you into new and fresh creativity.
Journaling Prompt 1:
Maybe it has been a while. Maybe journaling is something you do everyday.
No matter where you are in the spectrum of the journaling exercise, Ms Oliver’s wonderful question posted here in her poem, The Summer Day deserves our attention and personal reflection.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
It’s a journaling challenge I hope you’ll take on.
Write longhand 5 pages of your response to this question. Set a timer for at least 45 minutes to do so. Find yourself a wonderful corner and start writing in a notebook at home or in a cafe.
Need a notebook? Check out my selection at my shop here.
“The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver
1.
Something came up
out of the dark.
It wasn’t anything I had ever seen before.
It wasn’t an animal
or a flower,
unless it was both.Something came up out of the water,
a head the size of a cat
but muddy and without ears.
I don’t know what God is.
I don’t know what death is.But I believe they have between them
some fervent and necessary arrangement.2.
Sometimes
melancholy leaves me breathless.3.
Later I was in a field full of sunflowers.
I was feeling the head of midsummer.
I was thinking of the sweet, electric
drowse of creation,when it began to break.
In the west, clouds gathered.
Thunderheads.
In an hour the sky was filled with them.In an hour the sky was filled
with the sweetness of rain and the blast of lightning.
Followed by the deep bells of thunder.Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!
Both of them mad to create something!The lightning brighter than any flower.
The thunder without a drowsy bone in its body.4.
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.5.
Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.6.
God, rest in my heart
and fortify me,
take away my hunger for answers,
let the hours play upon my bodylike the hands of my beloved.
Let the cathead appear again —
the smallest of your mysteries,
some wild cousin of my own blood probably —
some cousin of my own wild blood probably,
in the black dinner-bowl of the pond.7.
Death waits for me, I know it, around
one corner or another.
This doesn’t amuse me.
Neither does it frighten me.After the rain, I went back into the field of sunflowers.
It was cool, and I was anything but drowsy.
I walked slowly, and listenedto the crazy roots, in the drenched earth, laughing and growing.
Whether you consider yourself artistic or logical, I believe we all possess a unique creative spark that is personally our own — it’s something personally yours which no one can steal or take away.
In fact the more you share your creativity, the more you have.
Don’t believe me?
Check out this thoughtful insight by Maya Angelou, another wonderful American poet.
That special creative element you possess is vital for seeing life as a miracle. It is the key to experiencing simple daily joy regardless the circumstance in your life. Here are a few questions to engage with the artist inside you.
Journaling Prompt 2:
Do you allow yourself to be creative at work or in life generally? Why or why not?
“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.
Journaling Prompt 3
Engage further with her thoughtful poem with these questions below.
- Where and when do you feel most free?
- What are the current constraints of your life? Do you see and embrace them as gifts? Why or why not?
Click here to listen to hear one on Youtube. Originally aired in 2015, she is interviewed here by Krista Tippett for The On Being Project.
For life coaching services, please get in touch via Linkedin. To shop products, visit: https://simpledailyjoystore.com
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