Remembering Poet Mary Oliver
A sad ending as January turns to February. Mary Oliver, poet of exquisite detail and reverence for nature, died on January 17. For over five decades Mary Oliver’s poems served as snapshots of the natural landscapes and rhythms of life.
Take a minute, or two, or two hundred, and nurture yourself with Mary Oliver’s poems.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
“Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going.”
“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.”
“Ten times a day something happens to me like this – some strengthening throb of amazement – some good sweet empathic ping and swell. This is the first, the wildest and the wisest thing I know: that the soul exists and is built entirely out of attentiveness.”
“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.”
“Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.”
“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”
“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
